The design of cuteness: Hello Kitty at 50

It may be hard to believe, but Hello Kitty, the shy little cat with no mouth and a red bow in her hair, has turned 50. It’s 1974, and Sanrio, a Japanese company specializing in the production of plastic sandals decorated with illustrations of various designs, particularly strawberries, hires illustrator Yuko Shimizu. A Japanese Bobtail cat, given to the young girl by her father, serves as the inspiration for the creation of the iconic character we now know as Hello Kitty, which would forever change the fate (and revenue) of the Japanese company. Just two years later, in 1976, Sanrio lands in the United States, opening its first gift shop in San Jose, California. From that moment on, Hello Kitty’s long journey to establishing itself as a kids favourite begins, wrestling with the then much more famous American illustrated characters, like those from the Disney universe. Half a century later Hello Kitty doesn’t seem to have aged a single day. Her popularity on social media and in retail seems to liberate the character from any kind of temporal frameworks. At most, she could be associated with the Y2K nostalgia wave, but that’s more to that.

Hello Kitty's success is undoubtedly also financial. As the BBC recently reported, over the last fifty years, the brand's profits have surpassed $80 billion, with an annual revenue of around $4 billion, as noted by The Economist. This has made Hello Kitty the largest Japanese franchise in the world, second only to Pokémon. So, what is the timeless secret of Hello Kitty? Without a doubt, it has a lot to do with design, understood both as an aesthetic element and, more loosely, as a moral and conceptual one. One could argue that Hello Kitty’s is a design of ‘cuteness’.

In his essay The Power of Cute, Simon May explains that ‘cute’ is defined by what it is not. It eludes responsibility, mocks power, and avoids moral judgment and excessive scrutiny: in fact, it manages to permeate contemporary culture by always staying just beyond the limits of perception and attention. It’s no coincidence that, both for her economic and iconographic success, Hello Kitty has been crowned ‘CEO of Cuteness’. Maria José Brialdi researches this very theme at the Università Statale, in Milan. She explains that “the concept of cuteness is elusive and difficult to define by its very nature. One could say that cute is not beautiful, not grotesque, not kitsch, not camp, and not sublime, even though it is a bit of all these things.” When in front of Hello Kitty, with her playful and soft traits, undoubtedly childish, we are comforted, enchanted, and even a bit confused, but certainly never frightened.

Everything that is cute, as Brialdi explains, “makes us feel less alone but never reveals all of its cards, maintaining a state of intimate distance, so it can satisfy and soothe without assuming responsibility, preserving a perpetual enchantment. The experience of cuteness is always a delightful one.”

Maria José Brialdi

Moreover, the word ‘cute’ is closely tied to the concept of ‘kawaii’. A Japanese umbrella term that encompasses an entire iconographic world, or rather, a true subculture that, since the 1970s – just when Hello Kitty was born – has celebrated cuteness, simplicity, and the shyness of manner and style, ranging from literary products (manga) and audiovisual works (anime) to accessories and clothing. At the semantic roots of the concept of kawaii lies the Japanese word ‘kawayushi’, which in its original meaning, up until the mid-20th century, meant ‘shy’ or ‘embarrassed’.

Shyness is a concept closely linked to cuteness, and it defines Hello Kitty's personality, whose profile fits the ‘shy girl’ archetype, one of the key figures in kawaii culture. “In Asian cultures, there is often a tendency to view a quiet temperament and a docile character as moral qualities. In contrast, in the West, culturally dominated by the rhetoric of the American Dream, the most popular characters tend to have strong and charismatic personalities. That’s why Hello Kitty initially had to struggle to earn the affection of her friends across the ocean, literally knocking on the doors of American homes during a time when the company was selling its products door-to-door. But what does it really tell us about the kitten-girl being shy, when her motto is 'you can never have too many friends'?”
 

Contrary to popular belief, Hello Kitty – whose full name is White Kitty – is not strictly a cat but a girl, five apples tall, who lives in the suburbs of London with her twin sister Mimmy and their pet, Charmmy Kitty. This was revealed by Christine R. Yano, an anthropologist and curator of the first retrospective dedicated to Hello Kitty, held at the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles in 2014, in celebration of the character's 40th anniversary. At the time of its creation, in the mid-1970s, London, as explained by Yano, embodied the ultimate idealization of childhood. Not surprisingly, Hello Kitty recently received birthday wishes from King Charles for her 50th birthday.

It might seem superfluous, but anthropology is essential for understanding the Hello Kitty phenomenon. Maria José Brialdi references the studies published in 1943 by the German biologist and ethologist Konrad Lorenz, regarding the physical attributes that make us more inclined to care for a living being. Among these are a large head in proportion to the body; a huge, protruding forehead; large eyes placed lower on the face compared to adults: chubby, round cheeks; a pudgy, rounded body shape; short and chubby limbs, soft, pleasant-to-touch body surfaces; and weak, clumsy movements. “This list provides fundamental coordinates for identifying and analyzing cuteness: Hello Kitty perfectly embodies Lorenz's profile of a cute object,” explains Brialdi.

On the same basis, in the 1970s, evolutionary biologist Jay Stephen Gould conducted a study on how Mickey Mouse's design had evolved over time, adopting increasingly infantile features, in line with Lorenz's principles, such as the enlargement of the head and eyes.

“Cute possesses a component of ugliness and deformity, but it manages to balance them perfectly,” Brialdi continues, noting how these same aesthetic traits, though more unsettling in nature, are also at the core of the iconic success of Jeff Koons' Balloon Dogs.

However, another key element contributing to Hello Kitty's widespread success is also tightly linked to her design: her lack of a mouth. According to Sanrio, this is a way of expressing that the girl-cat doesn't need a mouth to convey her feelings because she speaks with her heart. Hello Kitty thus transcends linguistic and geographical barriers, remaining an icon that is understandable and consumable worldwide. At the same time, as stated by Yuko Yamaguchi, the designer of Hello Kitty since 1980, this stylistic feature increases the audience’s empathy toward the character because everyone can project their own feelings onto her, in line with their current emotional state. The declared intent is to maintain such neutrality that it can reach everyone’s heart.

Thanks to this versatility, since 1984, Hello Kitty has been a children ambassador for UNICEF in the United States, and since 1994, also in Japan. In 2004, the institution even gave her the exclusive title of Special Friend of Children. Speaking of charity initiatives, in 2013, a one-of-a-kind Hello Kitty doll modeled after pop star Lady Gaga was auctioned for $21,729. In Hello Kitty’s vast universe, collecting plays another big part, with memorabilia that can fetch prices close to $100,000.

Maria José Brialdi

Her popularity extends well beyond just the child and pre-adolescent sphere, as evidenced by the multitude of collaborations with fashion brands and beyond: Adidas, Dr. Martens, GCDS, Blue Marine, Louis Vuitton, Balenciaga, and even Squire guitars.

“Due to Sanrio's enormous revenue,” comments Maria José, “cuteness today has taken on shades that we are increasingly skeptical about, but that doesn't make us any less enchanted. On the contrary, paradoxically, the more Hello Kitty merchandise floods stores, the more the girl-cat seems to gain popularity.” While some other classic characters that intercept the canons of ‘cute’, such as Snoopy or La Pimpa, have become somewhat historicized, Hello Kitty remains surprisingly contemporary. Along with characters from her universe – Cinnamoroll, My Melody, Pompompurin, and Kuromi, among the most famous – she graces the covers of mobile phones, keychains dangling from purses, and social media feeds, subtly populating our everyday lives. This is also evidenced by the viral, meme-driven spin-off dedicated to My Melody that originated in Italy, @mymelodyseilatop.  

According to Maria José Brialdi, the timeless success of the franchise can be explained in a nutshell: “Hello Kitty is fundamentally a character that can be loved without commitment, in the little spare moments of our hectic lives. You don't need to read book sagas, watch hundreds of animated episodes, or follow complex storylines to grow attached to her: she's a familiar, benevolent face, and all it takes is buying a plush toy or a sticker to become her fan.”