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Dita Von Teese
By Gardner LinnPhoto By Albert Sanchez
If everyone is naked, it’s the costumes that rule the stage.” When Dita Von Teese tosses out that nugget of wisdom in the middle of her book, Burlesque: The Art of the Teese, she’s speaking literally about costumes: the pasties and crystals and feathers and corsets of the burlesque performer. But those 11 words also neatly encapsulate the philosophy that has made Von Teese an international star and fashion icon. When stars—Brangelina, TomKat, blah blah blah—no longer have private lives, a little bit of Old Hollywood mystique is that much more potent. When every sexual fantasy can be fulfilled, or at least ogled via DSL, a peek of bare ivory flesh can go a long way. And when everyone is struggling to keep it real, artifice might be the realest thing of all.
It’s the tension between public and private, hidden and revealed, real and artificial, that gives burlesque its power, and Von Teese her allure. It’s the tease that makes Von Teese.
A typical Dita Von Teese performance begins with the costume: a Swarovski-studded gown, perhaps, slit all the way up the thigh, waist corseted into an extreme hourglass figure. Then the costume starts to come off: first the skirt, then everything else, until all that’s left are (to quote Tom Waits) pasties and a g-string, and she’s splashing around in a giant martini glass. Or a bathtub filled with champagne. Or dancing on a crescent moon. Her routines pay homage to the stars of burlesque’s heyday—the forerunners of what today passes for the art of the tease at your local Spearmint Rhino.
When Waits growls “all this hot burlesque for me” in his “Pasties and a G-String,” burlesque is a cruel joke, one played on both the performer and the audience, a transaction between two despairing souls who should know better but don’t. The striptease has become just stripping, and in the process has lost its most essential component. The striptease, in the hands of burlesque stars from Lili St. Cyr to Dita Von Teese, is about as entertaining as entertainment gets—which is also a pretty good definition of art.
“Anyone who thinks that as a burlesque dancer they are doing something that’s much different from what a stripper does, well, they are probably blind to the real history of burlesque,” says Von Teese. “Some of it was racier than what you would see in a modern strip joint.” It’s tempting to think of the burlesque revival, with its elaborate costumes and big-band music, as a throwback to more innocent times, but that’s only half true at best. But there is a difference between what Von Teese does and what your average stripper does, and it’s because Von Teese does know her history and is able to play out the tease to maximum effect, knowing how to strike the perfect balance between nostalgia and sexuality. The payoff is only as good as the show that precedes it.
The point of going to a strip club is to see naked women; the point of seeing a Dita Von Teese show is to see a Dita Von Teese show. Like all art worth talking about, Von Teese’s burlesque act is as much for her as it is for the audience. The serene expression on her face during a performance is that of someone who loves what she’s doing, and is doing exactly what she loves. The genius of Dita Von Teese is that she embodies what she loves so well that when people discover her through her shows, her website, or her book, they start to love the same things she does. Burlesque has made her a star, and in turn she has made burlesque a movement.
The turning point for Von Teese’s career, and for the burlesque revival in general, was the 2002 Pussycat Dolls show in Los Angeles, which featured Dita’s signature martini glass act. But like all overnight successes, she put in years of work to get to that point. Born Heather Renée Sweet on September 28, 1972, her interest in all things glamorous began at a young age in Michigan. “I grew up in a turn-of-thecentury home, and my mother collected antiques and would take me antique shopping. I had a lot of vintage clothes to play dress-up with,” she recalls. Movies fueled the fire: 1940s musicals and vehicles for glamour icons. “I just thought Betty Grable in Technicolor was more beautiful and colorful than some dumb old cartoon,” she says. Natalie Wood’s Gypsy, a 1962 biopic of burlesque star Gypsy Rose Lee, gave Von Teese her first taste of that world. The cumulative effect instilled in her the obsessions and ambitions that drive her work today.
This interest in glamour led to collecting vintage clothing, the pursuit of which introduced Von Teese to the wonders of the corset. The search for corsets naturally included fetish shops, where she first saw pictures of pin-up icon Bettie Page, which inspired her to try modeling herself, emulating Page at first but soon developing her own identity. Concurrently, the vintage men’s magazines she was collecting sparked an interest in burlesque, and Von Teese began working at a strip club.
But although her coworkers danced in spandex and stripper heels, Von Teese was rocking corsets and stockings, bringing some real glamour to the pole. When everyone else was just stripping, she was teasing. Soon her act and her following were big enough for her to embark on headlining tours of strip clubs, and before long she started to garner a national following in the fetish scene. Though she was a star in that world, it wasn’t until 2002, with the Pussycat Dolls show and a Playboy cover, that she exploded into mainstream consciousness.
Since then, Von Teese has continued dreaming up bigger and better burlesque shows while becoming a fashion and media darling. Though burlesque and fetish are still her passions, she is rapidly becoming a prominent figure in the fashion scene as muse, model, and supporter. Designers like Marc Jacobs, Louis Vuitton, Christian Louboutin, and Giambattista Valli have come calling, either to have her perform at their events or to walk the runway. She’s appeared in hundreds of magazines, including Vogue in America, Germany, Spain, Australia, and Italy. Even her 2005 marriage to Marilyn Manson was memorialized, not in gossip rags like Us Weekly or Star, but in an eye-popping photo spread in Vogue. Her profile is larger than ever, but she still retains the essential mystique. The tease is still in effect.
No matter when or where, Dita Von Teese is always Dita Von Teese. It’s a persona that’s carefully constructed, but all the more real because of that. And that’s the essence of the tease, an art that Von Teese has practiced since she was a kid, when she dreamed of being the glamorous showgirl she has become.
“I hated being a kid, actually,” she says. “I just couldn’t wait to be a ‘big girl’ so I could wear whatever clothes I wanted and wear all the red lipstick in the world!”
Hair: John Blaine www.rougeartists.com
Makeup: Kathy Jeung / www.magnetla.com/la
Styling: Alex Guttierrez / www.workgroup-ltd.com
Set: Pedro Zalba Peach & pink tulle strapless dress with beads & crystals by Phillipe & David Blond [available by special request 917-642-7449] Roxy Music 7-strand gold bracelet with large multicolored stones by Erickson Beamon [availability: please call 212-643-4810 for more information] Fuchsia satin pumps by Christian Louboutin