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Biography

Born Heather Sweet on September 28th, 1972 in Rochester, Michigan, Von Teese was a performer right from the start. She loved the old MGM Technicolor musicals and would emulate the stars of Hollywood's Golden Age as a child. It didn't take much prodding from her parents to take part in dancing lessons and other forms of performance art. As early as 16 years old, Von Teese was obsessed with fashion. While working at a lingerie store, she fell in love with all the fancy accoutrements a woman could wear. Then and there, an erotic entertainer was born. She knew right away that if fate would allow her to flourish as a model, she would do things her own way. This maxim has remained with her until the present day and still holds true. As a teenager, Von Teese's mother took her to buy her first bra, made from plain white cotton, and gave her a plastic egg containing a pair of wrinkly, flesh-coloured tights.



Von Teese says she was disappointed as she had been hoping to receive beautiful lacy garments and stockings, of the type she had glimpsed in her father's Playboy magazines. This fueled her passion for lingerie. She worked in a lingerie store as a salesgirl when she was fifteen, and eventually as a buyer. This was where she got her first corset. Von Teese has been fond of wearing elaborate lingerie such as corsets and stockings since. In college Von Teese studied historic costuming and aspired to work as a stylist for period films. She is a trained costume designer.



Von Teese began her career in a local strip club when she was nineteen. Disappointed with the lack of originality in all the other strippers' acts, Von Teese created a vintage-inspired outfit, with beehive hairstyle and elbow-length gloves, piquing the interest of the clientele. It was during this time at the strip club that she began some glamour modelling, before she eventually became a fetish model. Her retro pin-up look, frequently emulating Bettie Page in photo shoots, set her apart from most other fetish models. Her official website, often referred to as one of the first model sites on the internet, was created in 1992.



Von Teese has maintained meticulous care to own the copyright to the majority of her images, very aware of what became of models, such as Bettie Page, who did not. Von Teese achieved some level of recognition in the fetish world as a tightlacer. Through the wearing of a corset for many years, she had reduced her natural waistline to 22 inches, and can be laced down as far as 16 and a half inches. A diminutive person already, Von Teese stands at only 5'3" and weighs 105 pounds. Von Teese was featured in Playboy magazine in 1999, 2001 and 2002. It was her Playboy cover in December of 2002 that gave her her last name. Originally known simply as "Dita", a tribute to silent film actress Dita Parlo, Playboy insisted she use a last name. She picked "Von Treese" out of the phonebook, but it was misspelled "Von Teese". Dita, preferring the typo, adopted it as her name. Dita says that it is her appearances in Playboy that finally won her father's respect for her profession. In recent years she has appeared in more mainstream features, such as the 2005 short film, The Death of Salvador Dali, written by Delaney Bishop, which won best screenplay and best cinematography at recent festivals, including SXSW, Raindance Film Festival and Mill Valley Film Festival, and Best Actress for Von Teese at Beverly Hills Film Festival. She is due to appear in the upcoming feature films Saint Francis and The Boom Boom Room, both expected in 2007.



In addition to this, she has appeared in a number of music videos, including the video for the Green Day song "Redundant", the video for Zip Gun Bop by swing band, Royal Crown Revue, Agent Provocateur's video for their cover of She's Lost Control, and performed her Martini Glass burlesque routine in the video for "mOBSCENE" by Marilyn Manson. However, Von Teese has said that acting is not at the top of her agenda and she would only take roles that she feels are right for her, stating, "I don't understand why women feel the need to go into acting as soon as they become famous...But I suppose if the part were aesthetically correct, then maybe I could consider it." In recent years, the fashion world has come to accept Von Teese and her retro look, and she has appeared on a number of best-dressed lists.



Von Teese frequents the front row of fashion shows, particularly Moschino and Marc Jacobs, labels she is often seen wearing. The couple lived in Laurel Canyon with their four Devon Rex cats, Lily, Aleister, Edgar and Hermann, and two dachshunds, Greta and Eva. “I think it’s unfortunate that he’s had to exploit our divorce for the sake of record sales, but you do what you gotta do, I suppose,” muses Dita. “I think most people at this point understand what happened and what they’re dealing with when he’s doing interviews drunk and offering journalists cocaine. It kind of tells you what I might have been up against. I’m just trying to put it past me, I’m happy to be a single girl and have that drama out of my life.”