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Carolyn Molina, of Riverside, California, laughs while talking to a reporter at the Hello Kitty Con, the first-ever Hello Kitty fan convention in Los Angeles.
Carolyn Molina, of Riverside, California, laughs while talking to a reporter at the Hello Kitty Con in Los Angeles. Photograph: Jae C Hong/AP
Carolyn Molina, of Riverside, California, laughs while talking to a reporter at the Hello Kitty Con in Los Angeles. Photograph: Jae C Hong/AP

Hello Kitty conference brings Japanese kitsch to Los Angeles

This article is more than 9 years old

Timed to celebrate the brand’s 40th birthday, a conference and exhibition has brought fans of the self-consciously cute brand out in their thousands

Love her or hate her, you can’t avoid her. Certainly not this weekend in downtown Los Angeles, where the LA Museum of Contemporary Art’s warehouse space in Little Tokyo has been stripped of artwork to make way for what is billed as the world’s first convention for Japanese brand Hello Kitty. Moca’s highbrow art-lovers may balk at seeing their hallowed space filled with the super-cute Kittyphernalia but the convention is drawing record-breaking crowds. So is the related exhibition in the adjacent Japanese American National Museum. Called Hello! Exploring the Supercute World of Hello Kitty, it includes Lady Gaga’s 2009 dress made entirely of plush Kitty toys – she’s a big fan.

More than 20,000 Kitty fans snapped up tickets for the sold-out, four-day convention. Timed to celebrate 40 years of the brand, it runs through Sunday. Ticket holders get a sneak preview of the first ever travelling Kitty show, a feelgood, techno-pop tribute touring US arenas, and first dibs at exclusive Kitty merchandise.

Fans pose for photos in a giant teacup at the Hello Kitty Con. Photograph: Jae C Hong/AP

By 10am on opening day the line stretched several blocks, with many enduring hours in the baking sun to gain entry. Inside, fans had another two-hour wait to get into the main Kitty store. Even Christine Yano, co-curator of the JANM show and professor of anthropology at the University of Hawaii, who has tracked Kitty’s rise in her book Pink Globalization: Hello Kitty’s Trek Across the Pacific, was amazed. “This is fandom and fandom is contagious” says Yano. “Anthropologists call it emotional contagion and Sanrio has been excellent at knowing how to amp it up.”

Sanrio Inc is the Japanese merchandising company where Kitty was “born” in 1974. The company is named after its founder Shintaro Tsuji Sanrio, now in his 80s, who wanted a character to embellish a line of gifts, and coined the line’s motto: “small gift, big smile”. Kitty first appeared on a little purse, the original of which is kept in a vault at Sanrio’s headquarters and which it has loaned to KittyCon, where it is displayed on a velvet pedestal in a huge glass case, flanked by security guards.

Today Sanrio has reason to smile broadly, with sales of around $8bn from global licensing agreements and products, more than half due to Kitty. Over the years, she has morphed from a kiddie-centric character to a style icon. Much credit goes to Kitty’s in-house designer Yuko Yamaguchi, known as Kitty Mama, who took over Kitty’s design reins more than 30 years ago, softening the character’s image and introducing the pink palette. She is on hand for signings at Kittcon, her bright orange hair twirled into two tight pigtails on either side of her head.

Brandee Amore of Glendale, California, walks across the street before the start of the Hello Kitty Con. Photograph: Jae C Hong/AP

“Kitty has evolved over the years into a rock star who can do goth and hipster,” says Yano. She has inspired serious artists to explore Kittyness, such as Colin Christian, who has sculpted a giant fiberglass Kitty in bondage titled Super Space Titan Kitty, which is in the exhibition. But under the layers there is always the base of what Yano calls “infantalized cuteness”. Cute, or kawaii, is now synonymous with Japanese culture. And with this edginess comes a blurring between cute, kitsch and sexy, and fuel for Kitty detractors.

Kitty is, of course, a little girl, not a cat, though she happens to have whiskers. Her official bio from Sanrio says she is Kitty White and lives outside London with her family, “born” in an era when Japan looked at Britain through rose-tinted glasses. Janet Hsu, Sanrio’s US president says: “She’s a girl in a class of her own.”

Kitty’s feminist critics point to her mouthless, expressionless face, a mute object on to which viewers can project whatever they want. KittyCon exhibitor Kevin Krieser, who is selling limited edition Kitty sweatshirts made under licence by his California-based clothing company, calls Kitty a designer’s dream. “She’s completely flexible. Wherever you put her, she always works. Disney [characters] are not like that.”

Krieser credits retailer Target, the co-sponsor of Hello Kitty Con, for resurrecting Kitty in the late 90s, teaming with Sanrio on a line of Kitty products. The range coincided with the wave of “cool Japan” sweeping into the west, bringing with it Manga comics, anime and ramen, which some dub Japan’s “soft power” invasion. That, coupled with Kitty’s flexibility, allowed Sanrio to make a broad range of licensing agreements with diverse companies, and sowed the seeds of her comeback.

Along the way, Sanrio managed to turn cute Kitty into cool Kitty, helped by her distance from the Euro-American mainstream, free publicity from the rich and famous, deft licensing agreements and links with fashion.

Fans wait in line to attend the Hello Kitty Con. Photograph: Jae C. Hong/AP

A walk through the crowds at KittyCon attests that Kitty is pure product. Apart from the obvious – Kitty dresses, shoes and bags – there is Kitty toilet paper, a Kitty mould for Spam and even Beats by Dre Kitty headphones. There are cute Kitty stuffed animals for kids and edgier offerings, such as free Kitty tattoos. Stevie Nutter, 22, from West Virginia, who sports giant ear and tongue piercings, has been waiting in line for her “cute” Kitty tattoo for hours. She already has her own zombie version of Kitty tattooed on her thigh. “I like a little bit of everything,” she explains.

There are very few little children at KittyCon. Most attendees, at least on this school day, are seasoned collectors and fans who have come to snap up limited-edition products. Cherell Finister, 17, who’s with her mother, sports a pair of Kitty-themed Vans sneakers which she bought a while ago. “I’m a bit upset because they are selling them here and I bought them as a limited edition,” says Finister, who also has a $500 Swarovski crystal Hello Kitty USB drive.

Kitty’s fans include some men: there is a panel entitled Even Guys Like Hello Kitty. Tattooed bodyguard to the stars Big Abe, who poses with a couple of Kitty superfans, says he got to know Kitty through his clients. “I have a lot of stuffed dolls and some luggage, though I pretend it belongs to them when we travel,” he says.

Lisa Katzoff, 47, a rock singer from New Jersey who flew in for KittyCon, is weighed down with bags after spending hundreds of dollars on Kitty items, including a $300 limited-edition music box. Katzoff, who has been collecting since she was seven and even made a pilgrimage to Tokyo, visiting PuroLand, the Kitty theme park, says she doesn’t know why she’s so hooked. “I just know she’s cute and fun and I love her. She reminds me of childhood.”

What does she think of Kitty as a female role model, given her lack of a mouth? “Really, she doesn’t have a mouth? I never noticed. She’s just a cute cartoon character. She’s not a political statement.”

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