Keyhole Turtleneck

About

Keyhole Turtleneck (Japanese: 胸開きタートルネック, lit. “Open-Chest Turtleneck”), also called “That Turtleneck” (例のタートルネック) or “That Sweater” (例のセーター) in the same manner of That Pool, is a sexy turtleneck sweater which chest is open. Triggered by a female cosplayer’s tweet on Twitter, the sweater suddenly became a new fetish item in the Japanese Otaku culture on December 2014.

Origin

On December 4th, 2014, a Japanese cosplayr Myako (みゃこ)^[1] tweeted photos of a keyhole turtleneck sweater and herself wearing it (shown below).^[2] This turtleneck is listed in a catalog under number CNT-124 and was released by Japanese fashion brand COMFILAX with the price of 5,500 yen without tax. The tweet by the famous sexy cosplayer was immediately shared on the social web, and managed to earn over 40,000 retweets and 30,000 favorites within the first 5 days after posting.

今ってこんなタートルネック売ってあるんだね…！ pic.twitter.com/yfgolr7GLd
— みゃこ (@myakkomyako) December 4, 2014

Fetishisms of “Breasts Sack” and “Ribbed Sweaters”

Prior to the craze of the keyhole turtleneck, there were 2 pre-existing otaku fetishes or Moe trends that raised in the Japanese otaku culture in the past few years: “Chichi Bukuro” (乳袋, lit. “Breasts Sack”) and “Tate-Seta” (たてセタ or 縦セタ), an abbreviation for “Tatesen Sētā” (縦線セーター, lit. “Vertical-Lined Sweaters”). The former, Breasts Sack, refers to an illustration style which depicts clothes line along with the shape of underboob. This came to be often featured in otaku illustrations after 2009. The latter, “Tate-Seta”, refers to a fetishism of ribbed sweaters which fits to big boob’s sexy lines and its vertical-lined textures emphasize it. The allure of ribbed sweaters, especially turtlenecks, became well-known by this term circa late 2011, and it has been a very popular item in the Breasts Sack fetishism. Nowadays, there are tons of illustrations for these fetishes on online illustrators communities such as pixiv^[3] and Nico Nico Seiga.^[4]

Examples of Breasts Sack by Ribbed Sweater
Left: Rinko Iori from Gundam Build Fighters | Right: Azusa Miura from THE iDOLM@STER

Therefore, the online storm of this keyhole turtleneck was not a completely new one, but partly derived from the ribbed sweater fetishism, and was boosted by people’s surprise to the fact that such item actually exists in real life.

Spread

Inspired by this sexy keyhole turtleneck, amateur, and even professional, illustrators began creating their own illustrations featuring or parodying it on Twitter^[5], pixiv^[6] and Nico Nico Seiga.^[7] The amount of those illustrations had reached over 1 thousand within its first week. Additionally, some of coplayers bought and took selfies with it.

This online storm by the sexy turtleneck was covered by Japanese online gossip news media ITmedia^[8]^[9] as well as Crunchyroll^[10] and English news blog RocketNews.^[11]