![]() "I can't look like the Victoria's Secret supermodels, I can't look like the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue. ![]() Von Teese's half-moon manicure, silky waves and cat eye - largely self-styled - are legendary. Her influence is evident in pinup photography studios, budding burlesque stars who perform for tips in every major city and, of course, the reemergence of nostalgia for old Hollywood style. That brings us to the modern-day cult of Dita. It wasn't a bunch of guys waiting to meet me, it was all girls.” “I was totally amazed that there was a different audience for me than what I had expected when I first started doing this,” Von Teese says. She recalls a book signing in London where she was taken aback by the amount of women waiting to meet her. She's since traveled across the world, serving as a spokeswoman for Cointreau and MAC Viva Glam.įame is important to Von Teese, but it hasn't turned out quite as she expected. She famously befriended shoemaker Christian Louboutin, who makes her custom pointe shoes, and opened the Louis Vuitton Paris store by performing in a champagne glass. Near the end of the divorce, Von Teese was a star. During a recent TV taping, she told host Khloe Kardashian that Manson “encouraged eccentricities” in the best way. In an environment like Hollywood, focused on digging up gossip, Von Teese is surprisingly kind. Two years later, though, the couple divorced. “This is back when Playboy was a big deal still and there were movie stars on the cover of Playboy,” she says with a hint of a laugh.īy then, she'd begun dating goth-rock superstar Marilyn Manson, whom she married in 2005 in a wedding covered by Vogue. And it came, in the form of the cover of Playboy magazine's Gala Christmas issue. Whereas Cinderella hungered for romance and a man to sweep her off her feet, Von Teese just wanted recognition. I'm just a star.' That's not how my life is or ever was.” "I've never been that person who's like, 'I just have to do the creative. That's how I ran my business, and I was good at it,” she says. “I had a fake name and I was my fake manager. There wasn't much to the operation at the time, just Von Teese and a fax machine. one of the first adult websites on the Internet in the '90s,” Von Teese says. "Eventually, I decided that I could make enough money to support myself by dancing and taking pinup photos. They practically are, after so many hours spent researching their style and acts.įor a time, she balanced the demands of two daytime jobs with photoshoots and professional dancing, but finally began pulling in enough steady income to make the leap. Von Teese chats about the famous “risque ladies” of the past like old friends. “Then I wanted to make burlesque shows because I'd found out that a lot of the models that were pinups in the 1930s and '40s were also burlesque dancers." I'm going to make bondage and pin-up pictures, nobody's doing that,'” Von Teese says. ![]() "I was like, 'Hey, I'm going to make pictures like that. She remembers posing for fetish and pinup photography after seeing iconic photos of Bettie Page. Soon after, Teese took her passion for all things glamorous and got serious about it. By age 18, Von Teese dyed her hair black and started dancing in a Los Angeles strip club. Going out led to go-go dancing, which led to sewing her own costumes and getting as avant garde as she could. ![]() Von Teese was dating a club promoter at the time, and soon found herself drawn to nightlife. “I set my sights on beauty not long after the lingerie, a natural stepping stone to 'being a lady,'” she remembers. Von Teese picked up a side job at a department store makeup counter. That's something I always wanted.”Īs time went on, however, silky underthings weren't enough. For me, it signified womanhood and a rite of passage of being a woman. “As soon as they gave me that job in the lingerie store that was it, and I worked in lingerie for probably close to a decade,” she says. ![]()
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