ALTHOUGH MANY MAY TRY, FEW WORK THE RETRO BOMBSHELL LOOK LIKE DITA VON TEESE. LARGELY BECAUSE THE MODEL, BURLESQUE DANCER AND FASHION ICON HAS MORE COMMITMENT TO HER STYLE THAN MOST CELEBS HAVE TO THEIR MARRIAGES.
For someone with such bright lipstick, I’m a little surprised to find Dita softly spoken. Sure she’s confident, witty and feisty but it’s all so understated.Perhaps this is down to her gradual and organic rise to notoriety. The short story of her trajectory is from lingerie clerk to the biggest name in the burlesque revival.“Basically one thing led to another,” she said in her slow Michigan-hailing drawl, explaining how she came to be the biggest name in modern striptease. “I feel like the reason for me finding out about everything and why I’m successful is because I really got deep into the history of things.
“When I was working in the lingerie store I got into the history of lingerie and what women wore in each era. Then I found out about vintage lingerie and started collecting it, then I wanted to be photographed in it. So I started researching vintage style pin-up photos and then I found out the models in men’s 1930s and 1940s magazines were strippers and that’s when I learned about burlesque.
It was all very natural and all very honest and just came from me wanting to know more.”
This outlook – and a background studying historic costuming – has spurred countless lingerie manufacturers to bay at her manicured feet to lend her household name to their ranges. Friday-night staple, Wonderbra were the brand to win her over and the Dita co-designed range.
Lured by the brand’s iconic reputation and the fact she still has her first Wonderbra, Dita sought inspiration from her private vintage collection to create her own dream piece (including an ambitious bra with a top wire) blending design details from her favourite decades.
“I have a huge collection but I felt like there were still these big fantasies and Wonderbra let me do that,” she said.Although it has the same traffic-stopping potential as the infamous Hello Boys campaign, the subtext for Dita’s collection is very different. She hopes to get women thinking differently about their lingerie and why they wear it.“I never use it as a tool for seduction,” she said. “I use it as a tool to seduce myself, have my own confidence and have a secret for myself.“Or say I do have some kind of sexual encounter, I’m ready any time. I like the idea of this effortless seduction where you’re not trying to be sexy, you just are.”
Unsurprisingly, Dita is not a fan of the buying to impress your boyfriend approach.“Why don’t you buy something sexy to wear for yourself and then your boyfriend just finds you in it?” she says, almost with exasperation.“That’s sexy. Then he’s going to remember you as that girl who was always sexy and wasn’t doing it for anyone else.”
It’s fascinating Dita has turned an interest in alternative fashion into hugely successful career. And she seems equally as taken at how fortuitous it is that she has fused a passion with a profession. “I’ve always been committed to my look and my style, completely committed head to toe, but I never thought it would turn into a career into the extent it has for me,” she admits.“I was just some obscure strange girl, obsessed with vintage lingerie and retro style, that’s the way I was I didn’t really think about what it could be. “It feels good and it feels right because I know I didn’t do it for the money or to be famous. That’s the secret to my success. I did it because I had to, because I love it. I didn’t have a choice because I’m obsessed with it in a way no one else is.“It’s like I never quit playing that game of dress up that I enjoyed when I was five.
“Even if it wasn’t always the right choice and I didn’t keep my man, I still had a commitment to my own look and didn’t let it falter because this is who I am, this is what I enjoy, take it or leave it.”
By applying the same ethos to work, Dita became the biggest name in new burlesque and the first ever guest star to perform at the renowned Parisian Crazy Horse cabaret club (a career highlight for the performer).She said: “When I started doing mainstream events, people were saying ‘can you just wear a full bra and full-back panties?’“And I said ‘No. This is what I do. This is burlesque and burlesque is about G strings and pasties. Gypsy Rose Lee wore G strings and pasties and this is how it needs to be for me or I don’t want to it’.
“I had a strong commitment to it and keeping it true to the spirit of what it was, not trying to dumb it down and commercialise it and reminding people this is a racy form of entertainment and that shouldn’t change.“I started doing my show when there wasn’t even a burlesque revival. I was just a girl in a corset and stockings and high heels dancing to Big Ben music in a strip club.” Far from “just a girl” anymore, Von Teese has gone from those three minute slots in strip clubs to shows which cost $70,000 to finance and anywhere from six months to years to devise. With this sort of time and effort going in, it’s not hard to understand why Dita’s got to the point of not wanting to do her most famous routine where she bathes in a giant martini glass all the time.
“I insist people give the other acts a chance,” she said.“Most people who have seen all my acts will say the glass is the least extravagant and opulent. It’s the easiest one for me to do. It’s a piece of cake. I could do it blindfolded with one hand tied behind my back. But I want to challenge myself and think about things more and be a little nervous about how it’s going to go.” And if you’re thinking of booking a show, the new stuff is what you’re going to want to see. Dita has plans to move away from the playful 1940s-inspired routines to something a little more severe. “I wanted to do something just a little darker, so I’ve built this really big opium den set and it’s really beautiful. I’m doing the classic, evil dragon lady smoking so much opium that she starts taking her clothes off, so it’s a darker show. “It will be my most expensive show to date for sure.”
It’s hard not be won over by Dita. I like the way the world thinks she is out to titillate men, when, truly, she’s out to entertain herself,“It’s nice to see an alternative form of sexy,” she says when I ask about burlesque’s unisex appeal. “Besides what the media feeds us of women running on the beach in slow motion with the spray tan and perfect body and all natural make up, not all of us can fit into that image. Some of us need a lot more help and I’m talking about myself.“I could never fit into that and a lot of other women are like ‘well I can’t be that girl but maybe I can try to be this girl. I can put on red lips and false lashes and a garter belt and stockings and play with a feather boa and feel fabulous‘. “It’s another version of sexy and those of us who don’t fit into the Baywatch beauty, we have our own way.”
Words: Kerry Eustice
Illustration: Marguerite Sauvage
DITA VON TEESE: RETRO BOMBSHELL: Originally appeared in Fused Magazine issue 36
