Cleopatras Mail #9 — The Creation of Dita Von Teese 💄

In 1972 a fair haired babe was born in Michigan. Her father, a machinist and her mother, a manicurist, named her Heather. As she grew up she developed a passion for ballet and wanted desperately to be a professional ballerina. When she couldn’t afford lessons, she cleaned the bathrooms to cover the cost.

As a teenager she landed a job in a lingerie store and was captivated by both the femininity and allure of the lingerie: “I’d had a fantasy of wearing these things… I had a different perspective on lingerie to lots of people… to me it was a rite of passage into womanhood”.

There was another part of the job she loved which was the independence gained from having her own income stream. She enjoyed the sense of responsibility and ownership.

In general, she didn’t love her teen years. She wasn’t brilliant at making her new friends, taking a while to come out of her shell, and she found the changes in her body through puberty quite confusing and stressful. A strained relationship with her judgemental father added to the challenges of coming into her own.

“People who know me from back then are amazed by what I went on to do”