Dita Von Teese

Von Teese was born in West Branch, Michigan, the second of three daughters. When describing her hometown, she says, "It's a universe away from the colored Klieg lights of Hollywood and Paris. But on weekend afternoons, my mom and I had a front seat on a rocket ship to those faraway worlds by way of the old movies starring the most glamorous creatures – Betty Grable, Mae West, Carmen Miranda, Marlene Dietrich... They were our muses." Her father was a machinist and her mother a manicurist. She is of English, Scottish, Armenian, and German heritage. Von Teese has stated that one of her grandmothers was half-Armenian and adopted into an Anglo-Saxon American family. Von Teese is known for her fascination with 1940s cinema and classic vintage style. This began at a young age and was fostered by her mother, who would buy clothes for her daughter to dress up. Her mother was a fan of old, Golden Age-era Hollywood films, and from her, Von Teese developed a fascination with the actresses of that day, especially Betty Grable.

She was classically trained as a ballet dancer from an early age, and danced solo at age 13 for a local ballet company. Though she originally wanted to be a ballerina, Von Teese states that "by 15, I was as good as I'd ever be." She was later to incorporate this element into her burlesque shows, where she frequently goes en pointe. The family relocated from Michigan to Orange County, California, when her father's job moved. Von Teese attended University High School in Irvine, California.

When Von Teese was a teenager, her 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-colored pantyhose. 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 15, eventually as a buyer. Von Teese has been fond of wearing elaborate lingerie such as corsets and basques with fully fashioned stockings ever since. In college, Von Teese studied historic costuming and aspired to work as a stylist for films. She is a trained costume designer, often designing (and copyrighting) her photo shoots herself.

At 18, Von Teese had her famous beauty mark tattooed on her left cheek. In her first book, she states that she visited a strip club for the first time at age 19 and was soon hired alongside her job at a beauty counter. She was stunned by the other strippers' lack of originality and wanted to incorporate vintage and fetish style to her performance.Von Teese chose her stage name by adopting the name Dita as a tribute to silent film actress Dita Parlo. For her breakthrough December 2002 Playboy cover, she was required to have a surname, so she chose Von Treese from the phonebook. Playboy misspelled it Von Teese, a name which she then kept. Von Teese is known for her signature painted eyes, heavily penciled brows, swipe of crimson lipstick, and blue-black locks. She says, "I have my signature look and I'm sticking to it, because it's the look that is one hundred percent me, and one hundred percent created by me. I might be a one-trick for it. But it's a pretty good trick!"