Raising A Glass to Glamour

Dita Von Teese has revolutionized the art of the burlesque show. She’s also a bestselling author, an activist, and the International Ambassador for Cointreau. Cheers!

By Linda Marx

As a precocious Midwesterner growing up in West Branch, Michigan, burlesque and fashion icon Dita Von Teese (née Heather Renee Sweet) was captivated by the glamour and sophistication of the 1940s. She loved pin-up imagery (Betty Grable), vintage lingerie and the Golden Age of Cinema.

While her dad was a machinist for a company that made graphite, her mother, a manicurist, encouraged her daughter’s interests and bought her girly clothing from those sexy, bygone eras. But she drew the line at undergarments. At one point, when buying Dita her first plain white bra, she also gave her a plastic egg containing a pair of flesh-colored tights. Von Teese was disappointed—she wanted lacy bras, racy panties and sexy stockings even back then. So she took a job in a lingerie store so she could surround herself with the sensual attire she had seen the models wearing in the pages of her dad’s Playboy magazine. “I have an old soul that started young,” explains Von Teese, now 39.

The burlesque queen has always loved that 1940s glamour and clinking of the cocktail glass aura while dancing chic to chic on marble floors of fine supper clubs and cabarets. She dreamed of the days when she could partake in that sophisticated lifestyle. So when her mother sent her to ballet classes, she excelled, dancing solo at age 13 for a local ballet company. By 15, she was quite accomplished, and at 18, she had left her family, who had moved to southern California, to study historic costume design in college, then dance her way around the world.

“I started my career as a dancer doing performance art,” she explains. “Then I went to a strip club and thought, ‘Wow, I can do that!’” And she did. Today, she incorporates ballet into her romantic burlesque spectacle, which she started performing internationally in 1992. Her talent, moxie and popularity have made her a modern-day Gypsy Rose Lee. “I want to bring romance and sophistication to striptease,” she says. “This is my goal in the next few years.”

Already, Von Teese is credited with bringing the art form back into the spotlight with a new sense of glamour. Taking audiences from London to Los Angeles, and from Sydney to Sao Paulo into a journey of fantasy and spectacle with ornate sets and dazzling Swarovski crystal-adorned costumes, she is best known for her cocktail glass show, where she performs a classic style striptease that culminates with her bathing in a martini glass. (Also an actress, she recently performed this striptease in a glass on CSI in an episode appropriately entitled, “Too Hot To Handle.”) Vanity Fair dubbed Von Teese the “Burlesque Superheroine” because she’s involved with every aspect of her burlesque shows, from the sets and lighting to costume and music. Nothing happens without her input and approval.

Some of Von Teese’s better-known dances have involved a carousel horse, a giant powder compact, a filigree heart and a clawfoot bathtub with a working showerhead. Her feather fan dance, inspired by burlesque dancer Sally Rand, featured the world’s largest feather fans, which are now on display at Hollywood’s Museum of Sex. “I like to break the rules,” she laughs. “And my future wish is to be more eccentric. I am even learning how to fence.”