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Dita Von Teese, the Meryl Streep of burlesque, met me for lunch at her restaurant of choice, the Russian Tea Room, in Manhattan—and you can’t get more retro than that. The restaurant was founded by members of the Imperial Ballet in 1927, and Ms. Von Teese, who trained to become a ballerina before turning to life as an haute stripper, is herself the remarkable embodiment of a retro Vargas pinup girl from the 40s and 50s.
As she settled into our booth and admired the room’s whimsical opulence, she said unself-consciously, “I like to go places where the elderly hang out.”
She is fun, and she is her own invention. She appears, disarmingly, to inhabit a parallel universe. Among her early influences: the golden era of Hollywood films and musicals; the pinup sweetheart of World War II, Betty Grable; and the original queen of burlesque, Gypsy Rose Lee. “I’m proud to say that stripping to music onstage is an American invention,” she said. “Burlesque was thriving here in the 1930s, whereas the landmark Crazy Horse, in Paris, didn’t open until 1951, after its founder saw Lili St. Cyr perform in a bathtub in America.”
Ms. Von Teese is a scholar in her field. “Who was Evangeline the Oyster Girl?” I asked. “Her real name was Kitty West,” she replied. “She was a pretty great New Orleans performer with green hair who would come out of a big oyster shell and mate with a pearl.”
Dita Von Teese’s real name is Heather Renée Sweet, and she was born in working-class rural Michigan in 1972, the daughter of a machinist and a manicurist. She now lives in a swell 1920s Tudor Revival house in Los Angeles. “I’m a natural blonde, you know,” she confided, and perhaps one would never suspect it, even when she’s performing. “That’s what G-strings are for,” she explained with her customary tact.
Her perfectly coiffed hair is jet black, her lips red, her beauty mark a discreetly suggestive tattoo on porcelain skin, her everyday clothes high-fashion vintage. She has appeared on the International Best-Dressed List. (Among her biggest fans: Marc Jacobs, Christian Louboutin, Jean Paul Gaultier.) She gives artifice a good name.
“But what’s Heather Sweet like?” I asked.
“I feel so docile. It’s me, but it’s not. It’s not who I choose to be. Heather Sweet from Michigan has no confidence. She’s shy.”
“Dita,” I said, “shy girls don’t perform naked in public.”
“But I wouldn’t stand there buck naked. I have beautiful lighting everywhere, rhinestones everywhere, feathers everywhere. I wear layers of body makeup. It’s all super-controlled. And it’s a far cry from the person I really am.”
She appears so perfectly contrived in public, it’s become the real thing. She’s a beguilingly flawless illusion—“a genuine fake,” as she pointed out about herself, happily quoting her friend David Downton, the fashion illustrator.
We were meeting at the Russian Tea Room to celebrate her latest evangelistic work on behalf of the beautification of women, a 400-page illustrated book called Your Beauty Mark: The Ultimate Guide to Eccentric Glamour (published this month by Dey Street Books). “I’m not going to mow into a cheeseburger,” she said. “It’s the discipline of glamour.” She skipped the Business Express Lunch menu in favor of more festive, glamour-appropriate fare—a glass or two of Moët & Chandon Impérial champagne, a tasting of caviar blini, and a red-caviar omelet.
Who attends her burlesque shows?
“Women and gays mostly,” she said. “Straight men who accompany women appreciate it because the women are getting into the spirit.” Her venues are international; the audiences vary from 700 to 3,500. But, she added guilelessly, “I know there’s going to be people reading this that are thinking, Oh, jeez, so she’s a stripper with more rhinestones and feathers than a pole dancer. Whatever. I know people have to see my show to understand it.”
Perhaps only the most humorless kind of feminist would disapprove, however, of one of Dita’s signature acts, in which she frolics naked in a giant martini glass. But many more women find it all harmless fun—along with some major corporations. She performed at the opening of the Louis Vuitton flagship store in Paris, as well as for Cartier, when she emerged, dripping in diamonds, from a red Cartier box.
She now designs her own international lingerie line, called Dita Von Teese. It turns out that she worked in a department store fitting bras from age 16 to 24. Her early obsession with lingerie, and corsets in particular, she told me, set her on the road to pinup girl and burlesque queen.
And her personal life? Her marriage to androgynous Gothic rock ghoul Marilyn Manson was brief. She explained that part of the problem was that they had both created their own illusion. But while she was still quite proud to be known as Heather Sweet from Michigan, Marilyn Manson wouldn’t acknowledge that he was really Brian Warner from Ohio.
She has now lived cozily for two years with a Chicagoan who’s a graphic designer at Disney. “I hope you don’t mind my asking this,” I said. “Who does your man wake up to—Heather Sweet or Dita Von Teese?”
“I think he has the best and the worst of both,” she said.
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