It was late 1985 when Hugh Hefner walked into the grand opening of Playboy's Empire Club in Manhattan, the latest attempt by the magazine company to freshen its suave, sexy image.
A quarter century of success in running such clubs was on the wane and a new gimmick was thought to be needed to attract a new audience of women male bunnies.
"I thought, 'This is the end of it,'" Hefner recalls, chuckling. "And indeed, within a year or so, it was."
Now, two decades after rising feminism and a fading nightclub scene helped close the last U.S. Playboy Club in Lansing, Mich., in 1988, a new Playboy Club is set to open Oct. 6 in Las Vegas, just as fresh and retro-hip as a pair of bell-bottom jeans.