Dita Von Teese is a modern legend in her own right.
She’s the queen of burlesque, the pioneer of the martini glass strip tease, and the closest thing we have to a current day pin up. But she’s also just appeared in Taylor Swift’s music video for Bejewelled, from her new album Midnights, where she plays Swift’s “fairy goddess” - not godmother - and teaches her the martini glass routine.
This has introduced the 50-year-old dancer to a whole host of new fans, perhaps too young to recall her marriage to Marilyn Manson or know the ins and outs of her Architectural Digest house tour, which is leading people to ask the much deliberated question: “Who is Dita Von Teese?”
Dita Von Teese is an enigma, and she likes to keep it that way. But there’s a little we know about her life and history that can help us answer that question.
She’s a trained ballerina
Before burlesque, Dita Von Teese trained to be a ballet dancer. She attended ballet classes throughout her childhood, but told The Telegraph she gave up as a teenager because, “by 15 I was as good as I’d ever be”.
However, Von Teese still incorporates areas of her ballet training into her burlesque shows, where goes en pointe (supporting all your weight on the tip of your toe) as part of the routine.
She’s been performing burlesque since 1992, back when she was just 20 years old, and has created routines so iconic they’ve made it to museums. No, really - the fans from her famous “feather fan dance” (pretty much one of the first routines anyone associates with burlesque), as inspired by Sally Rand, are the world's largest feather fans in existence and currently on display inside the Hollywood Museum of Sex .
That beauty spot is a tattoo
Von Teese has been obsessed with pin ups and 1940s starlets since she was a young girl, when her mum and her would watch old Hollywood movies on the weekends.
Her fascination has been so longstanding that she actually got that beauty mark tattoo when she was just 18 - back when she was a natural blonde, too.
The hair and beauty mark may be augmented, but Von Teese’s trademark style is entirely authentic. She even told Inked magazine back in 2009 that the first time she was bought a bra - a training bra, given to her by her mother back when she was a teenager - she found the item “not very exciting” and wished she could wear lingerie like in her dad’s Playboy magazines.
“My mom was like, ‘You can't have the black lace one,’” Von Teese told Inked. “And I was like, ‘Why not?' I've never equated beautiful lingerie with seduction or sex. It's not about trying to get a man. Not at all. It's about surrounding myself with beauty in my everyday life-whether it's a bra or a notebook. I want everything around me to be attractive because I look at it every day.”
She was once married to Marilyn Manson
During the time Von Teese was dating Marilyn Manson, 2000 to 2007, the pair were considered to be an ‘It’ couple, albeit it a kinda freaky one. Now, their relationship will be remembered very differently.
In 2021, abuse allegations arose surrounding the singer, including claims from his ex-wife Evan Rachel Wood that he subjected her to “years of horrific abuse”, groomed her as a teenager and “brainwashed her into submission”. He has since been dropped from his record label as a result of the allegations.
Von Teese has said that no such abuse happened in her relationship with Marilyn Manson (who gets his name from starlet Marilyn Monroe and serial killer Charles Manson, respectively) but stated instead that their relationship broke down due to addiction and infidelity.
“Please know that the details made public do not match my personal experience during our seven years together as a couple,” Von Teese said on Instagram. “Had they, I would not have married him in December 2005. I left 12 months later due to infidelity and drug abuse.”
She invented the Martini glass routine
Granted, burlesque stars have been dancing in glasses for years, but Von Teese’s martini glass routine is her trademark and no one elses. Speaking to Las Vegas Magazine in 2017, Von Teese says: “The truth is you might have seen a [burlesque dancer] splashing around in a glass, but Catherine [Von Teese’s creative partner] and I have very distinctive choreographies that have never been done in burlesque. So we took that idea of a girl in a glass and created a choreographed dance. That’s what’s very different about what we’ve been doing.
“Catherine was one of the most innovative burlesque performers of all time. She taught me her choreography, then we expanded on it together. It started as a dueling martini versus champagne glass - I was kind of the hip, 1950s martini drinking girl and she was the elegant champagne drinking girl. So we did this dueling striptease that climaxed with both of us in our giant glasses onstage.”
Oh, and she teaches people it
Despite it being Von Teese’s trademark routine, she doesn’t mind playing up to its popularity sometimes and passing on the moves. You may think Taylor Swift was one of the first to get this treatment as the two splash about with matching choreography in her Bejewelled music video, but Von Teese has done this before - even on live TV.
There is one thing she does to make the routine a bit more patented though: she has her own special glass. In that Las Vegas Magazine interview in 2017, Von Teese shared: “Every time I do the glass, it’s a little bit like doing my hit song. But I always want to do it in a different way. Plus, every time I make a new glass, people imitate it, so I thought it was time to make another one that will be difficult to copy… I work on the designs of the glasses with Catherine D’Lish, who has been my creative partner for the last 18 years. We woke up one day and said, ‘Let’s do the ultimate glass. It’s time.’”
You may remember her from such films as...
Von Teese is a regular Troy McClure, that’s for sure. She’s cropped up in music videos for years before TayTay, including for Green Day’s Redundant, Manson’s Mobscene, and Up In The Air for Jared Leto’s band Thirty Seconds to Mars.
You may also recognise her from small TV roles on CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, where she played femme fatale Rita Von Squeeze (yes, I’m serious), or 2021’s The Masked Dancer, where Von Teese was dressed up as a Beetroot.
Or maybe you’ve seen the Martini glass routine imitated by its countless copycats. It’s so coped, in fact, that Von Teese sued the production company behind Charlies Angels: Full Throttle over a scene where Cameron Diaz imitates the routine in a strip club, alongside the Pussycat Dolls.
And most recently, Von Teese cameo’d in the hotly hyped Olivia Wilde flick Don’t Worry Darling, as a blonde seductress alongside her iconic glass - this time shaped as a champagne coupe. “We filmed it in late 2020, and for all I knew it could hit the cutting room floor,” Von Teese told Vogue, sharing that she was surprised people recognised her without her trademark black hair.
It’s safe to say Von Teese is very well known - even more so now thanks to Swift - but she doesn’t always feel it. On her Dont Worry Darling cameo, she even told Vogue she thinks people just see her as “that girl in the glass.”
