Well, it seems to be a dream of many people to see Hello Kitty and Chanel collaborate. I agreed that Kitty-chan needed to be draped in Chanel, without a doubt. I mean, it’s probably what she wears at home when no one is looking…So to create this… first I sourced an old-school Chanel N.5 Bottle, and drew it. I tried to capture all of those little nuances of the bottle’s feminine shape where the colors change/fade/flow but still give it thick enough lines to have it as a comic/manga style piece (with a cute factor…but not too cute). The perfume inside has a subtle sparkle effect which you need to see in person to clearly make out.
Kitty-chan and poodle (Coco) are based on a legit Japanese Gotochi Hello Kitty toy that I drew and modified. I combined this with a number of actual Chanel items again drawn or otherwise created from the originals including all three of Kitty-chan’s bags (but the Kitty face/heart was my idea), the belt…and actually the diamond is real, serious piece of jewelry. All the diamonds are real…or were real…still are real…I think…
The Chanel logo is of course not available as a font although there is one decent knock-off. However, I wanted the real thing, and not the modern one either. So I dug deep through vintage Chanel ads and found a black and white one that had the classic, thicker Chanel words. And so I recreated them through a process of tracing the original, and then visually approximating the correct degree of thickness/sharpness to each letter.
In fact, Chanel’s old logo was far cooler and more powerful than the ones I see used these days. The letters were spaced further apart, looked heavier and more…somehow sexy, alluring and in your face. Like the way Coco would have wanted it.
The actual ad slogan – Every Kitty alive wants Hello N.5…every way she can get it…meow!” – was a spin/parody on an old Chanel ad as well. Again from the late 60′s or 70′s.
The “Hello” at the top was the a little more difficult and I ended up going with a thinner version looking more modern, to weight the image properly.
You will also notice that the perfume is measured in apples…like someone else we know…
Her glasses were drawn based on a pair from Chanel that I found and loved. They suited Kitty-chan’s head and ribbon quite well. For Kitty herself, I usually space her eyes and nose a little differently than Sanrio’s standard although its more noticeable in some of my other work. Again, its those little subtle changes that can often make Kitty look a little more mysterious, cuter and add some extra personality to her.
What would Hello Kitty be without her “lovely red ribbon”…well my version is done in sequence, made out of some really hot Parisian-fabric, sparkling with luminescent kitty hallucinogenic dreams…at least in my head…I don’t drink and “art” though…not often anyway…
Paint and splatter effects is both consistent and less than prominent so that the image could remain clean in typical Chanel style.
For the record, Hello Kitty was on official license in this print with Sanrio’s share of the proceeds going to charity. Chanel has not reached out to me yet to champion a Hello Kitty x Chanel collection but I am waiting patiently by the phone…
