- Hi, AD, I'm Dita Von Teese, welcome to my home.
[upbeat music]
I moved into this 1927 English Tudor
about five years ago.
When I moved into this house, it was all white walls
and I really loathe white walls.
I love color, I like feeling like
all my favorite colors are represented in the house.
I had a mural painted that was inspired
by a picture of a castle, and there's lots of
little hidden things like a little monkey up there.
There are a few white walls left like this one here,
because I'm going to cover this in feathers.
I love having blank space to come up with ideas.
I started wearing vintage clothes
because I couldn't afford all the cool designer jeans
my friends had, and then that kind of spilled over
into collecting vintage and antique things for my home.
[calm music]
So this is my kitchen.
I wanted to make a very glamorous kitchen
because no matter what you do, no matter
what your house looks like,
everyone hangs out in the kitchen.
I used to famously have a pink kitchen
and so a lot of these things I took
from my pink kitchen and I used them here,
like the sconces and the chandeliers,
I gave these chairs all a makeover and painted them.
I saw this faucet, it was the most outrageous thing
and I had to have it.
I just love it, it's really weird
and it's not maybe the handiest thing, but I like it.
I also love my AGA stove.
A lot of people talk about this stove when they come in.
It's British racing green stove,
I had the plates dipped in copper,
'cause I love the copper and green
and I had this made.
So there are a lot of things that were big challenges
and big people that I had to find to make
all these custom things for me,
which is not the easy way.
I just wanted the most beautiful stove ever
and I got this stove and then realized
I had to learn how to use this stove.
[calm music]
This is my living room.
I am a maximalist, not a minimalist,
and this room is evidence of it.
I have a lot of stuff.
You see more of the vintage taxidermy
and all my little found treasures.
This is a new art piece that a friend of mine
from Australia sent to me that does ethical taxidermy
of things that died naturally, and she made
this bunny a little tailcoat.
I have a grandfather clock which is currently turned off
so that it would not bing bong bing all over the videos.
This is a piece that my friend Stasha found
at a flea market and then bought the vintage fabric
and redid this piece.
This actually was a reproduction of a French sofa.
It's not very big and also I should say every single sofa
in this house is extremely uncomfortable.
There's really nowhere comfortable to sit in this house.
[calm music]
These are some of my favorite taxidermy in the house.
These are Victorian-era bird taxidermy
in these heart-shaped domes.
Every time I move house which is three times
in the past 20 years, I hand carry those myself
because if somebody ever shattered those,
I would be devastated.
These are all my vintage and rare books,
like this is a fun one, this is a very rare one.
It's been a source of truth in burlesque
and when you look at this book, you realize
that burlesque was not all Gypsy Rose Lee
or like the movie portrayed burlesque,
but really it was kind of a glorified strip club
in a lot of ways in the '30s and the '40s
and this book is the proof.
I have a lot of collections of my vintage feathers
from back in the days when ladies used to wear
big, beautiful feathers in their hats
and you know, they don't make them like this anymore,
I promise you, 'cause I buy modern feathers all the time
and they do not look like this.
Lots of useless information from a burlesque dancer.
Feathers, I have a lot of powder puffs.
I just like them, I keep getting them, just like them.
More powder puffs, 'cause you definitely need
a powder puff on a stick, too.
[bass music]
This is my dining room.
I bought this dining room set at the flea market
and I put one of my favorite fabrics
that I saw in Paris in Jacques Garcia hotel,
and I had to have it so I tracked it down
and I put it on these flea market chairs.
This was just a piece of glass that I cut,
'cause there was no glass top,
and then my ladies that did all the murals,
they painted this glass.
I'd heard this story that Robert Smith
from The Cure used to keep a lipstick
on a string by his front door
and he'd just like put it on before he left
so I asked him once if that was true,
and he said it was true at one time,
so I put this lipstick on a gold chain
so that when I'm having parties and I can't find
my lipstick or don't want to go upstairs to my vanity,
then I can just like do it right here, so.
It's kind of an antiqued mirror so I can't see much,
but it still works.
[calm music]
This is an antique fishbowl that I bought
when I was on my last U.S. tour.
I love going on tour, 'cause I have a semi truck
filled with all my lighting and my props
and all my gear and I love to go to the antique stores
and throw more stuff on there and my crew hates it,
but I do, I bring them like this fishbowl
and tell them, "Find a spot for that."
[calm music]
So this is my little patio, I like to have my tea here
and watch the hummingbird fights that happen
over this feeder.
I love red geraniums and so this is usually
filled with red geraniums, I'm obsessed with it
because I'm from Michigan and I used to go to this place
called the Grand Hotel, and so people from Michigan
will know about this, but it's just the longest porch
in the world and it's just tons of boxes
of red geraniums, so it's one of those childhood obsessions
that has spilled over into my life.
[happy music]
It's winter time so the backyard is not in full swing
but I love collecting vintage patio furniture
and redoing the cushions, so I've had this bed
for many years and it's been like three different colors.
And then this is my latest, newest one,
which I'm very excited about 'cause I love the tassels.
My pool, which rarely gets used because it's freezing,
and my pool house which I turned into a pub.
[calm music]
I kind of always envied people that had a tiki bar
or something, so I thought well I do have an English Tudor
so I should make a pub.
I had this stained glass put in here.
It has little things that I like in there,
there's a swan, there's a feather, a rose,
a glass of champagne and a magic mushroom.
I have like a leather banquette over here
which actually holds pool toys and things like that.
This is just like another thing for me to put stuff in.
I started collecting Toby Jugs, so my fans bring me
Toby Jugs to put into my pool house pub.
[sensual music]
Here's the woman cave library,
where I keep a lot of my art collection, too.
This is kind of just like an area I've put pictures
of myself 'cause I'm too embarrassed
to put them up on the main walls.
So I collect a lot of Hollywood memorabilia.
This is the corset that Natalie Wood wore
when she played burlesque star Gypsy Rose Lee
in the 1962 film Gypsy, and then this is a corset
that Betty Grable wore in one of her films
in the late '40s, and this is kind of like
my woman cave and TV room.
I bet you can't find the TV.
I love art and I like to look at art,
and I don't like to look at screens
so I hid the TV behind this piece of art.
So you basically open this up and pull the TV out
and you have to turn it sideways.
It's kind of silly, but it is what it is,
and this is one of my favorite artists,
his name is Peter Driben.
I have four paintings from him,
which also appears on a men's magazine.
Bettie Page posed for these kinds of things
and they're kind of, they're men's magazines, they're racy.
This magazine, I have this painting over here,
and then I also have this one over here on that wall.
I'm very proud of these.
These are Bettie Page's favorite shoes
and they came from the Irving Klaw Studios,
which is where she took all those vintage bondage photos
and I have the model release that she signed
in 1952 for $60, very simple.
I mean, people make me sign like five-page model releases
now, this is like four sentences.
This is one of my treasured possessions,
an Art Deco bar.
I love painted glass and reverse painted glass.
It's one of my favorite things and oh my god, hold on.
Okay, I have way too many martini and champagne glasses too,
as you would guess.
Oh, I have my bar-noculars in here.
I take this to like music festivals
and load it up with my favorite booze.
No one would suspect a thing, right?
[calm music]
I've collected a lot of this art over the years
that inspired my pin-up career, and also
they painted all these jewels that are kind of
meant to be holding the paintings,
and then I also love this tassel.
There's a designer called Jacques Garcia
that always does these long rope tassels.
I shoved this into my suitcase [laughs] it's really heavy,
on one of my trips home from Paris,
but I really love it, every time I walk up here,
I love the feeling of that rope, if you know what I mean.
[calm music]
This is my upstairs area where my bedroom is
and all my closets are.
I think they used to be children's rooms,
but they're not anymore.
I have a very, very close friend who's a shoe designer
so that's why I have this many shoes,
and of course I have all the showbiz shoes here.
There's shoes I wear a lot more than others
so those are kind of front and center usually
and they're kind of arranged by color.
All the everyday ballet flats are down here
'cause I don't wear high heels every day,
and most of the black shoes are together,
and this is all my favorite shoes right here,
and then the other side are my
kind of like secondary shoes.
I'll show you a pair of special ones.
These are embroidered from a house called Lessage
and they also have these little Marie Antoinettes
on them and they have my name on it,
it says "These are Dita's, with love from Christian."
So I have a really big vintage hat collection.
This is from the '40s.
They were called tilt or doll style of hats.
This is a little fedora, like a menswear style fedora
and it has a fake parrot on it,
I've had this one since I first started
collecting vintage, actually.
This is my vintage broach collection.
I love collecting big, fancy broaches.
Everybody needs a rhinestone praying mantis.
[bass music]
So this is my bedroom.
This is my version of minimalism.
Light colors, not too much clutter.
This is Alistair, oh, it seems he was just
having a kitty dream.
Wake up, you've got company.
[laughs]
My friend Stasha and I designed this bed
after a Mae West bed, Mae West famously
had mirrors all over her bedroom
because she said she liked to see
how she was doing.
My boyfriend and I designed these curtains together
based on a few historic pictures
and I waited for months to get this fabric in
and took it to a drapery place
and I actually had to go there in person
and help pin these on because they didn't do it right
and I was like "Honestly, just do it like this,"
so they were like "We didn't think about
"doing it like that," so I love going to the work rooms
and torturing the people that work there
and then they end up liking it in the end
because they learned something new.
This is my lingerie drawers,
I'm a lingerie designer so I have to wear
a lot of my own lingerie to see how it goes.
These acrylic handles were a huge nightmare.
These were in a constant state of disrepair
for like two years before I found someone
that could actually fix the original acrylic
that somebody bungled.
In case that person thinks they're gonna take credit
for this, no.
[calm music]
This is my vanity, it's from the '30s, it's authentic.
All this stuff is museum waxed down,
because that cat over there
loves to wake me up at like three or four in the morning
by knocking all these things off.
[calm music]
Another little patio, this is like a great place
that I like to escape when I'm entertaining
and I can see everything that's going on.
Me and my cat like to hang out out here too.
[calm music]
Okay, AD, I've got to feed this cat
so I'm gonna show you out.
Thanks for coming.