Katie Warren/Business Insider
Playboy Club memberships range from $5,000 to $100,000 a year.
- A new Playboy Club has opened in New York City, 30 years after the last club closed down.
- It includes swanky lounges, a super-exclusive subterranean speakeasy, and of course, Playboy Bunnies who serve drinks in updated versions of the iconic costumes and bunny ears.
- Memberships for the club start at $5,000 and go up to $100,000 for top-tier VIP access with some outrageous perks.
- Honestly, I expected the club to feel somewhat like a strip club - but I was pleasantly surprised.
Thirty years after the last Playboy Club closed down, the Playboy Bunnies can once again be found serving drinks in their iconic one-piece costumes complete with bow ties, bunny ears, and high heels.
The new Playboy Club opened in New York City amid mixed reviews, with some calling the club "tone deaf" for opening in the era of #MeToo.
But according to Richie Notar, the creative director of the club and alum of Nobu and Studio 54, and Nicole Levinson, who handles marketing and communications for the brand, the club has always been ahead of its time and inherently empowering for women. For them, the new club is a welcome revival of the brand.
"We're really just taking a brand that had a bit of a memory, an iconic brand, and reviving for a latter day," Notar said. "Everyone has some connotation of what Playboy was. Somebody had their dad's Playboy in their room, women wanted to be bunnies."
Notar said that it's the people who make a club special - and he hopes this club will see a variety of interesting personalities. "We want 25-year-old up-and-coming artists to come here and sit next to a tech icon," he said.
Memberships at the Playboy Club start at $5,000 a year and go up to $100,000. Those who buy a top-tier membership will get perks that include chauffeur services to and from the club, 10 complimentary nights at a local boutique hotel, 10 VIP sports tickets a year in the Playboy seats for either the US Open, Giants, Jets, Knicks, or Rangers games, and a VIP table with bottle service at all Playboy events. The club had sold more than 200 memberships as of mid-October - about 40% of those to women, a representative told me.
I visited the new Playboy Club on West 42nd Street, a short walk from Times Square.
Here's what it was like inside.