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'I'm 45 and people want me to strip': Dita Von Teese on family, new music and #MeToo
Ten years ago I found myself in a bright white suite in a luxury Parisian hotel, discussing bras with burlesque performer-turned-lingerie entrepreneur Dita Von Teese. She was shilling for Wonderbra, yet at the time I was more interested in asking about her recent divorce from shock-rocker Marilyn Manson.
“NO QUESTIONS ABOUT MANSON!” came the shout midway through the interview. It was the American star’s then-publicist, hiding behind a screen to ensure we stayed on-underwear-message.
Von Teese laughs when I remind her. “Well, a lot’s changed in ten years. He and I are friends now. But that sounds about right...it was frustrating because it was so fresh and I was just trying to get it out of my mind.”
Neatly, we are talking the day before her ex-husband’s birthday - eleven years ago to the day on which Von Teese served Manson with divorce papers, their marriage rent asunder by his “partying” and dalliance with the then-19-year-old actress Evan Rachel Wood.
Over a decade on relations have thawed, he even invited his ex-wife to his party this year. “He was like, ‘you’ve got to bring a gift.’ I was thinking maybe I could take this striptease candle…” she says, gesturing to a ruby-red scented candle featuring a woman with the likeness of a scantily clad Von Teese, “so he can look all the time at what he doesn’t have any more!”
It’s a much more relaxed and easygoing woman I encounter today. For the last four years, Dita has found happiness with Adam Rajcevich (a graphic designer with Disney). They may not be married, but, despite being in her mid-forties, she hasn’t yet closed the door on having children.
“I’ve just had my annual exam and the doctor was like, ‘I’m about to deliver a baby to a 51-year-old woman.’ I was like, ‘are you serious?’ ‘Yeah, things are changing.’ OK,” she smiles, “I’ve got five years left if I want. And I could always adopt.”
A curvy five-foot-six, she’s not long from her surprisingly no-nonsense 20-minute morning make-up routine. She does admit she’s fresh out of her rollers. No matter how relaxed she is, nobody gets to see Dita Von Teese with straight hair.
Still, this is dress-down Thursday chèz Dita.
“Yeah, this is pretty much my at-home outfit,” the poised, coiffed, 45-year-old says of an ensemble comprising black cashmere sweater that hovers round her navel, black Capri pants and Louboutin flats with circus pompoms “that Christian just sent me”.
We are sitting in her fantastical 1920’s mock Tudor home in Los Angeles. The outfit does look rather demure compared to the riot of taxidermy, antique pin-up art, plants, ceramics, glassware and roaring, castle-sized fireplace that surround us.
Not pictured: her crockery collection, hat room or classic car portfolio. A fleamarket and eBay junkie, Von Teese is a retro obsessive with forward-looking business smarts. “My art and my vintage cars have served me well over the years. I get to enjoy them and the value goes up.”
It’s the first week of 2018. The world’s most famous practitioner of what we might reductively call “posh striptease” just performed a New Year’s Eve spectacular at Downtown LA’s Ace Hotel. It was the precursor to her latest album release, a self-titled album written for her by respected DJ/producer Sébastian Tellier - a gently electronic, breathily sensual update on iconic Serge Gainsbourg/Jane Birkin musical collaborations. There’s been alarming talk of some concerts, but she she cheerfully confesses that she had to remind the French record label that “I can’t sing this live! I don’t have the control over my voice.”
Much more definite are American and European runs for a new burlesque production, her audience these days “predominantly female, gay and a lot of couples”. Her fifth scent, Scandalwood (top note: femme fatale) is not long out and her self-titled lingerie line is now in its “sixth or seventh year”.
Hard to imagine two years ago the smalltown Midwesterner born Heather Sweet was considering retiring.
“I had a lot of pressure from my former producing partner. Every night I’d come off stage and she’d be like, ‘oh, you didn’t look so good right there...’” she recounts, pinching some imaginary waist flab. “‘Can we cover up this part? You need to really suck it in…’
“I was thinking, ‘oh God, maybe I should quit before people start seeing any flaws that could arise from the aging process..it was starting to get to me.”
Then the forthright and cool Von Teese – mandatory attributes, one suspects, if you make a living emerging near-naked from a giant martini glass – decided to say stuff that.
“It occurred to me that there are all these women who are older that I admire: Jennifer Lopez and Gwen Stefani, Madonna and they are all out there still. It has meaning for me to watch them to go through different phases of life and still embrace their sexuality and sensuality. I need to be an example as well. I love performing burlesque, people still want to see me do it,” she shrugs.
Von Teese began disrobing for money in the early Nineties, but insists she never experienced any abusive episodes, even when playing the kind of lower-rent venues when she’d merrily scrabble about to “pick up dollar bills off the floor!”
She says firmly, “I always had a boyfriend that I would drag along, and I always travelled with assistants. I remember someone spiking my drink once, and wondering: why am I awake 15 hours later after the show? Things like that would happen to me occasionally, but nothing that was really bad. I always had very distinctive boundaries. I guess I’ve been lucky.
“And, I was my own boss,” she continues, “so I didn’t have to feel obliged to accept jobs.” It’s a stance on which she’s obviously even firmer now. “I just dropped a deal to do a project here because I thought, ‘I don’t need this guy breathing down my neck and asking me to go to dinner. I’m not desperate.’”
This is the paradox of her chosen profession, pointedly so in these #MeToo times. The transaction is sex, or sexiness, and it’s front and centre, so Von Teese can deal with it directly. In movies it’s harder to navigate the “come up to my room and we’ll discuss this script” dynamic.
“I can’t imagine how that must be. The Harvey Weinstein thing… was totally common knowledge’, she says. “I’d go to the Cannes Film Festival and everybody knew. He’d invite me to yacht parties but I didn’t ever have any bad experiences with Harvey. But I also wasn’t trying to be an actress.”
From where I’m sitting – a couple of feet – it feels like Dita is at her most comfortable when she is driving the talent - and she was had a lot of proteges who are more than willing to follow where she leads.
“In my fantasies, I work with more protégés and put them in my acts, and I get to sit back and host and present. I’ve started doing that a little bit, but I had one bad experience with a crazy protégé who went bonkers on me."
Also, “I can’t even find young girls who’ll fit in my outfits,” she says out of the side of her mouth.
So what does the burlesque pioneer at 50 look like? The raven-haired Von Teese, by the way, is a natural blonde, with shades of grey emerging. Does she envisage the day when she’ll embrace the silver fox reality?
“Oh definitely! Every two weeks, when I pull out that box of black hair dye, I’m like, God, wouldn’t it be great to not be doing this? But be careful what you wish for, right?” she concludes with a wink.
Dita Von Teese (Record Makers) is released on 16th February