Vegas Magazine - Niche Media - There is a place beyond the crowds, beyond the ropes, where dreams are realized and success is celebrated. You are invited.
Issue link: http://digital.greengale.com/i/666061
When Dita Von teese opens the Door to her Tudor Revival home in Los Angeles, it's instantly apparent that there is no off-duty mode for the glamorous brunette. Instead, the petite artist, who has crafted her own niche as a modern-day burlesque muse, channels film noir era elegance in a 1940s pink silk dressing gown. Hair, makeup, and jewelry: All are a state of close-up perfection: "I think natural beauty is great and I wish I had that," says the 43 -year-old Von Teese. "Like, 'Oh, I woke up like this.' But the truth is, I'm an ordinary blonde girl from a farming town in Michigan. And I don't want to be ordinary." Sitting amid a menagerie of stuffed exotic animals in her living room with triple height ceilings and Gothic arched windows, there's very little that qualifies as ordinary. As if to underscore the fact, Von Teese's Devonshire Rex cat, Aleister Von Teese, who currently attracts nearly 64,000 followers on Instagram, strolls past. Nearby, a stack of her latest book, Your Beauty Mark: The Ultimate Guide to Eccentric Glamour, offers an in-depth, DIY peek into Von Teese's very unique revival of old-school style. She did once appear at a benefit for the New York Academy of Art wearing nothing but $5 million in diamonds, but the book, she explains, is not about imitating her rather outré brand of allure. "You can create glamour—and this book is a step-by-step how-to," she says. "Even if you don't want to look like a 1940s-era movie star, this is about designing your own life and crafting your own myths. And the book is full of my friends who aren't Victoria's Secret supermodels, but have nevertheless gone from modest beauties to birds of paradise." vegasmagazine.com 87 Dita does Dallas— and Vegas!—riding a plush mechanical bull in her Burlesque: Strip Strip Hooray! show. PhotograPhy by Kailyn idora (both Pages)