About

Cat Keyhole Bra (Chinese: 猫咪镂空刺绣荷花边抹胸, lit. Openwork Cat Bra) (Japanese: ねこランジェリー, lit. "Cat Lingerie") is a set of lingerie designed by Nonori and sold by China based online retailer Taobao.^[2]^[6] The set features a bra with a cat head shaped cut-out in the centre, which reveals the chest of the wearer. A sudden popularity surge led to the outfit becoming a new fetish fad in January 2016, much like the Keyhole Turtleneck the previous year.

Origin

The clothing set first appeared for sale on Taobao as part of the Nonori collection of clothing.^[2]^[6] The bra set features a characteristic cat-shaped keyhole between the breasts, a cat paw print on the back of the underwear, and a bell choker, and is available in the colours black and white. Following its release, a single piece of fanart of the clothing first appeared on Pixiv in July 2015,^[1] featuring Touhou Project characters Chen and Rin Kaenbyou (shown below, right). In late January 2016, a sudden surge in popularity occurred, leading to many more pieces of fanart being created for the outfit, mainly by Japanese fans.

Precursor: Keyhole Turtleneck

In December 2014, Japanese cosplayer Myako (みゃこ) tweeted photos of a keyhole turtleneck sweater and herself wearing it, which was immediately shared on the social web. Inspired by the sexy keyhole turtleneck, illustrators began creating their own illustrations featuring or parodying it on Twitter, Pixiv and Nico Nico Seiga. After a week the amount of illustrations had already surpassed 1,000. This popularity was also noticed by several Japanese clothing retailers, such as online retailer Rakuten^[5] who released their own version featuring a catface around the keyhole.

Spread

According to pixiv Encyclopedia^[13], The lingerie suddenly caught an attention on the Japanese social web in January 2016, by a tweet by user @pomupome1 on 22nd of that month. This tweet had earned over 13000 retweets and 12000 favorites within its first 3 weeks.

みんなたち女の子の推しにこれ着せて… pic.twitter.com/RApKrmYmfT

— ぽむっきん (@pomupome1) January 21, 2016

Translation:

Everyone, Please dress your favorite girls in this…

The artwork, typically featuring characters from various anime series wearing the attire, first started appearing more often on January 23rd on sites such as Pixiv,^[3] Twitter,^[4] Tumblr^[12] and DeviantArt. These illustrations had amounted to over 100 within the first day of the fad beginning. The rise in popularity towards the bra set was also noted and written about by Japan-orientated websites Sankaku Complex^[10] and RocketNews24,^[11] where it also became one of the weekly most popular articles at the latter. By January 27th, the amount of illustrations had surpassed over 450 on Pixiv,^[3] and over 250 on both Danbooru^[8] and Gelbooru.^[9] That same month, the bra set also became available on the international Japanese fashion website Pocket Tokyo for preorder.^[7]