Dita Von Teese: "It Doesn’t All End When We Hit 30, 40, or 50"

Dita Von Teese is, by her own admission, the most famous stripper in the world. To uphold such a title, there is serious work required. “I worked with a costume designer once who asked me, ‘Have you ever thought of using a zip?’ I said, ‘No, I’ve never even considered it, not even once.’ Instead we try and come up with maniacal ways of doing a striptease. You can’t be the most famous stripper in the world and not be doing some shit that’s more complicated than anyone else. You want to figure out how to make it harder, how to level it up.”

Dita Von Teese wearing Jenny Packham in Diamonds and Dust

Von Teese – born Heather Sweet – is largely responsible for turning burlesque into an art form. She sees her performances as a series of technical challenges that necessitate skill and a huge dose of determination; very few could elegantly untie five laces from the back of a corset before maneuvering out of it while dancing in heels. “I have a little book where I keep a score: me versus the costume. When I did Crazy Horse I wore this incredible pearl corset and it was like a Houdini trick to get out of, and that’s the point. I like to create something absurd that no one else would take on.”

The performer is currently in London for her new show, Diamonds and Dust, at the Emerald Theatre in the West End. For selected performances only, she stars as Lady Luck, in what Von Teese describes as a “fun, frivolous romp” about a real-life showgirl—the saloon-owning, gun-toting Miss Kitty LeRoy—played by Faye Tozer, who was previously in the pop group Steps.

In person, Von Teese is as glamorous as you’d expect. When we meet, she's wearing an elegant Jenny Packham tweed two-piece skirt suit and heels. Her dyed black hair (she is a natural blonde) is immaculately teased into her signature '40s side-sweep and her distinctive make-up is flawless—a treat from the Charlotte Tilbury team on this occasion, but she usually does her own. Just above her right cheekbone is a tattooed beauty spot. She is a living, breathing hybrid of 1940s icons Bettie Page and Betty Grable. “I’ve always loved glamour more than beauty because you can create it,” she says. “When you look at the origins of the word 'glamour,' it has nothing to do with money. Is a private jet glamorous? Maybe, but when I think about glamour it’s about that extra sparkle; it makes you want to know more about someone. It’s that thing that makes you think, ‘Who is this?’”

Von Teese wearing Jenny Packham at the 2023 Olivier Awards in London

Now 52, the performer is more surprised than anyone that she is still very much in demand. The last few years have seen her do regular six-week residencies in Las Vegas. In an industry where careers typically end post-30, Von Teese has changed the game. “It’s important to remind people that it doesn’t all end when we hit 30, 40, or 50,” she tells me. “I shouldn’t retire myself too soon; if people still want to see me and I can still sell tickets, then let’s go. My whole life I’ve loved looking at women who are older than me. It’s good to look at someone five years older, or however much older, and think, 'She’s doing what I want to do and she looks great'. It’s important for me to do that too.”

All burlesque shows require a certain level of physical fitness, but Von Teese’s require a notch above. Her trademark is her martini routine, in which she removes her clothes and then splashes around in a giant glass, an act that was borrowed by Taylor Swift in her 2022 music video, Bejeweled. She does weights, pilates and barre classes, but she’s not evangelical about exercise. “I don’t get obsessed with it,” she shrugs. “I tell myself that my body is strong and I work out when I can. Sometimes I choose between sleep and exercise. Doing the shows all the time keeps me at a certain physical level. What has changed [as I’ve grown older] is that there are certain things that I don’t feel I need to do anymore in my performances—maybe I don’t need to bounce around in that costume anymore. When I think about the kind of act I want to do now, I want to be womanly and powerful—more of that.”

Von Teese performs her signature martini act at the Alexis Mabille couture autumn/winter 2024 show

Costumes are very important to Von Teese; she lights up when she talks about fashion. They are, for her, a way of making burlesque an escapist fantasy her audiences will never forget. Jenny Packham, a favorite of the Princess of Wales and Sarah Jessica Parker, has made her costumes for Diamonds and Dust, part of a long-standing collaboration between the two. “Costumes are my biggest extravagance in life and they have to be otherworldly,” Von Teese explains. “None of the costumes in my show are things you can wear or buy on the street. Jenny just gets it. I’ve worked with a few other designers, but there’s something about her beautiful beadwork and her approach that means she always gets it right with me.”

Von Teese was born in a small farming town in Michigan, a world away from the bright lights of global stages. She always loved dancing, and classic films from the '40s. Her introduction to entertainment was more low-key than is often portrayed in profiles about her. She attended a “rinky dink” ballet school but went without formal dance training. “I cleaned the toilets in exchange for free classes,” she says matter of factly. “Sometimes I read that I came from the ballet world, and it makes me laugh. It wasn’t that glamorous.”

Von Teese on stage at Diamonds and Dust

When she was 13, her family moved to Orange County where she fell into the L.A. rave scene. There, she was influenced by local drag queens and club kids and started making her own costumes to wear to club nights: top hats trimmed with feathers, worn with fishnets and bustiers. She hasn't deviated from her pin-up girl look since. “I’ve seen the press make fun of me for still wearing the same thing,” she says. “Yep, I’m still wearing the some of the same things I’ve worn for 20 years and I’m not sorry about it. I don’t envy anyone else’s style; I can appreciate someone with different style to me, but I don’t have to make it mine.”

In the '90s, she started her career as a pin-up model, and performed as a go-go dancer at clubs where no one bothered with cameras. In 2002, she appeared on the cover of Playboy. She had selected the stage name ‘Von Treese’ from the phone book, but the magazine misprinted it as ‘Von Teese’ and the moniker stuck. “When I think about the '90s, no one ever told me how to fend off unwanted advances,” she says. “I just skated around it—especially because I was a Playboy bunny. The Playboy Mansion wasn’t wild back then, it was a place for the bunnies to meet Hef’s rich friends. I came out of it unscathed. I always had long-term boyfriends, so I would just tell men that and it seemed to work.”

Von Teese outside Claridge’s in 2021

Although she will not be hanging up her Louboutins any time soon, her legacy is having changed the demographic of burlesque almost entirely; what used to exist almost solely for male entertainment has become high-level girls’-night-out territory. “I’m doing the London Palladium next year and that palladium will be mostly full of women,” she says. “The '40s is often called the ‘golden age of burlesque’, but it wasn’t really—it was essentially strip clubs in big theaters. It was working men’s entertainment, where they paid a couple of bucks to see people parade on stage and take their clothes off. Now it means something very different. Now is the golden age. It’s not the same male hetero gaze anymore. Even when men hit on me and ask me out, I’m so shocked. I’m so used to women approaching me.”

Burlesque aside, Von Teese has been approached to pen her life story, but she’s biding her time until she can write without fear of offense. “I want to write a memoir when I can really go in for the kill and not hurt anyone’s feelings,” she says. “I think perhaps you get to an age where you can tell it like it is. You have to be able to talk about the stuff that gets your goat, and the people who did you wrong. You want to hear the real truth.”

Diamonds and Dust is on now at the Emerald Theatre. Tickets are available at diamondsxdust.com