The flamboyant designer behind Hello Kitty \u2014 the cute Japanese character that became a global mega brand \u2014 is stepping down after more than four decades in charge of her look.<\/p>\n
Yuko Yamaguchi has been responsible since 1980 for the design of Kitty, who is officially not a cat but a little girl from London, overseeing her rise to the epitome of Japan’s kawaii soft power.<\/p>\n
But now Yamaguchi, who often wore Kitty-style dresses in public and tied her hair in buns \u2014 has “passed the baton to the next generation,” Sanrio, the company behind the character, said on its website Tuesday.<\/p>\n
The company said the new designer, who goes by the pseudonym Aya, was due to start by the end of 2026.<\/p>\n
Yamaguchi “listened to the voices of fans, actively collaborated with artists and designers from Japan and abroad and has grown Hello Kitty into a character loved by everyone,” Sanrio said, as it thanked her for her work.<\/p>\n
Hello Kitty started off as an illustration on a vinyl coin purse.<\/p>\n
It has since appeared on tens of thousands of products \u2014 everything from handbags to rice cookers \u2014 and has secured lucrative partnerships with Adidas, Balenciaga and other top brands.<\/p>\n
The phenomenon shows no sign of slowing, with a Warner Bros movie in the pipeline and a new Hello Kitty theme park due to open next year on China’s tropical Hainan island.<\/p>\n
Unlike other Japanese cultural exports such as Pokemon or Dragon Ball, there is minimal narrative around the character, whose full name is Kitty White.<\/p>\n
She has a twin sister Mimmy, a boyfriend called Dear Daniel, and a pet cat of her own, Sanrio says. She loves her mother’s apple pie and dreams of becoming a pianist or poet.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The flamboyant designer behind Hello Kitty \u2014 the cute Japanese character that became a global mega brand \u2014…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":288949,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[146,68873,85,46,147297,147298],"class_list":["post-288948","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-entertainment","tag-hello-kitty","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-sanrio","tag-yuko-yamaguchi"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/288948","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=288948"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/288948\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/288949"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=288948"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=288948"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=288948"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}