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With Hello Kitty Con launching on Thursday, and other Kitty-related events scattered throughout the city (like a scavenger hunt and a retrospective), excitement is bubbling around Los Angeles in celebration of the iconic Sanrio character's 40th anniversary. The folks over at The Line hotel in Koreatown are getting in on the action as well with their Hello Kitty-themed rooms that will be available to guests (who were lucky enough to book them before they sold out) starting today through November 2.
LAist stopped by The Line on Tuesday afternoon to check out the decorated rooms. A few of The Line's rooms were set aside for this Hello Kitty project. Even the The Line's POT and Commissary chef Roy Choi visited one of the special rooms while we were there, snapping photos of the red Hello Kitty emblem painted on the window of one of the hotel suites that was most decked out with HK love. Choi created a Hello Kitty Spam Musubi that hotel guests can order through room delivery and everyone else can get in the lobby at caFe.
Going inside one of the Hello Kitty rooms actually made us feel like a kid in a Sanrio store again. Pink Kitty pillows adorned the bed, Hello Kitty decals decorated the windows overlooking the city, HK-branded chocolate sat on the pillows, and the shower curtains were also covered with Hello Kitty images, all in pink. And there was an impressive amount of Hello Kitty swag for guests: Hello Kitty robes, iPad covers, 40th anniversary plush dolls, blankets, snacks, books, toys, and even toilet paper.
The Line designer Sean Knibb was in charge of decorating these rooms. There's a special Hello Kitty Apartment Suite on the top floor that other hotel guests can view; nobody is staying in that room. Knibb repurposed Hello Kitty objects into things you wouldn't normally imagine as furniture or as part of the architecture. Hello Kitty plush dolls were made into blankets, bales, and even clouds coming out from the ceilings. The bathtub was adorned with plastic white daisies and lined with tiny Hello Kitty trinkets. There was a dining area completely wall-papered with Hello Kitty toilet paper, and accompanied by a toilet paper chandelier. A large couch doing its best impersonation of chocolate cake with icing sat in the living room. The Navajo-print lounge chairs that you'd normally find in The Line's rooms were dyed pink to match the color scheme of this room. Even the plush dolls on the Hello Kitty blanket were dyed lavender.
And what was surprising was that in the bedroom was a closet full of robes, lingerie, heels and clothing—this signified that the suite was actually the 40-year-old Hello Kitty's apartment.
"The thing I would try to do is make Hello Kitty feel luxurious and grown up and a little more sexy and urban and little more real to someone like myself who's 40," Knibb told LAist.
He had Sanrio send over Hello Kitty objects and worked with them to create this Hello Kitty world. And he managed to do it all in five days with a team of about six people.
"[I was] taking objects that you wouldn't normally think of as elegant or luxury and then try to work them into the space—in the architecture or wall-papering the room or taking the little statues and using them as architectural elements within the design," he said.
