LONDON — Dita Von Teese loves everything vintage.
The burlesque dancer, otherwise known as the Queen of Burlesque, has been a vintage collector for the entirety of her adult life and it’s something she has dedicated herself to.
Von Teese is one of the stars headlining Goodwood Revival, a three-day festival that takes place in West Sussex spanning across vintage cars and fashion.
She will be appearing in conversation on the Revival Style Stage, alongside Richard E. Grant, Penelope Tree, Pattie Boyd and Gabriela Hearst, and judging the Best Dressed competition, hosted by Dandy Wellington.
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“I went last year for the first time and it was very exciting for me on several levels. Being immersed in this world where everyone’s dressed in vintage and all of the cars are pre-1965, I just didn’t know something like this existed and I kept saying it was my favorite festival I’ve ever been to and I don’t ever want to miss it again,” Von Teese said in an interview.
Charles Henry Gordon Lennox, the 11th Duke of Richmond and founder of Goodwood Revival said, “She personifies the spirit of glamour. She’s a really important person in the ongoing mission to destigmatise secondhand fashion, and really inspire people of all ages to explore vintage fashion for themselves.”
Vintage fashion came naturally to Von Teese from a young age. She grew up in Rochester, Mich., and was glued to watching movies from the 1930s and 1940s with Betty Grable, Carmen Miranda and Rita Hayworth.
“When I was a little kid, I thought,I’m going to dress like that when I’m an adult,’ not really thinking that people don’t dress like that anymore,” she recalled.
Von Teese first started buying vintage fashion in the 1990s because she couldn’t afford designer clothes and they were readily available. She was noticing a parallel, where modern fashion was referencing designs of the past.
“My thinking was I can get that look for less and I would buy vintage bullet bras and try to fashion myself on looks that emulated Jean Paul Gaultier’s designs. It really started as a desire to have a unique look on a budget,” she said.
She has become a savvy shopper from years of practice.
“During the pandemic, when my tour was on hold for years, I started going into my archives and selling off some of my vintage things. My accountant called one day and said, ‘You’re making more money selling your vintage than you do touring, maybe you should stick to that,’” she adds.
Von Teese has two storage units full of her vintage collection, as well as two rooms counting in her house filled with vintage hats and clothes.
It’s a collection that can rival a museum and she has even seen versions of her pieces on display such as a couture Christian Dior New Look gray three-piece suit from 1954 with the red serial numbers still intact.
The suit jacket comes with tweed buttons, a big full skirt and a blouse with garters that can be attached to stockings.
She was shown the suit at a vintage store in San Francisco. “The person who owned the store said they had something really special, but it was expensive. He brought it out and I gasped. I tried to keep my cool when he said how much it was, which was not very much because it’s worth 15 times what I paid for it. It was such a score that I got a hate email from somebody who had wanted it,” she said.
Von Teese is a collector that still wears all her treasures and finds that it’s the best way to keep track of moths.
“My clothes deserve to have a life and I don’t believe in putting them under glass and treating them like they’re an artifact,” she said, adding that she wears her pieces on rotation, from a Dior coat she bought 25 years ago to a Jean Paul Gaultier dress that the designer gifted her 20 years ago.
Her love for vintage has extended into cars, homeware, art and books.
Von Teese’s first car that she bought was a 1939 Chrysler New Yorker and then quickly swapped it for a 1940 Cadillac LaSalle convertible.
She wanted her cars to match her favorite era of clothing and has been building her car collection since, which she humbly calls “decent sized.”
She also has a taste for American cars from the 1930s through to the 1950s. “I like cars that I can drive around Hollywood and I live in an area where people were driving these big, beautiful 1930s cars. There’s certain roads and bridges that I drive across to really give me that feeling of how it really was,” she said.
Von Teese is a persistent collector.
She calls her vintage car salesman her “car enabler,” who told her that he would never sell a deep emerald green metallic 1953 Cadillac that she was eyeing up. A few years later he gave in and sold it to her.
Another car she bought from him is a 1952 Mercury Lead Sled with short mirrors and shaved off door handles and mirrors.
“It’s fun as a woman to step out of a car like that; people don’t expect it,” Von Teese said.
Her cars are just as much part of her uniform as her jet coiffed hair, red lips, pale skin and ladylike mannerisms.
“Sometimes people think it’s like a real chore, but I don’t spend that much time getting ready,” she contends.
“I love wearing just a simple sweater and T-shirt or a full skirt with a nice bag and comfortable ballet flats. I like the challenge of showing people you can still look elegant without being overdone. I don’t put a lot of fuss into my look unless I’m going on TV or for my shows.”
Von Teese is performing a residency at The Venetian Resort in Las Vegas, which runs until Oct. 11.
The show is an ode to the city’s showgirls.
“I’m using vintage Bob Mackie costumes [from ‘Jubilee!’] and they were the only Las Vegas showgirl costumes that he made. The costume budget was $12 million and nobody will ever spend that much money on costumes anymore, but I managed to bring those out of the archives just for this show,” Von Teese said.
The same costumes were borrowed from her for Gia Coppola film “The Last Showgirl” starring Pamela Anderson.
Von Teese’s show is a modern take on the Las Vegas showgirl revue. She has thrown out all the old fashioned rules about height, weight and age and has even included men in feathers.
Von Teese is giving new meaning to the showgirl archetype, though she has faced restraint from showgirl puritans.
“The showgirl has essentially become extinct, perhaps because [some people] haven’t with the times and with what people find meaning in,” she said.
The burlesque star will be returning to the U.K. next year for one of her most “glambitious” shows yet with “Nocturnelle,” which will tour London, Manchester, Birmingham, Stockton and Edinburgh.
The show will include elements of old-Hollywood, theatrical magic and high-art “stripscapes.”