Biography

The family relocated from Michigan to Orange County, California when her father's job moved. She attended University High School in Irvine. In college, she studied historic costuming and aspired to work as a stylist for period films. She is a trained costume designer, often designing (and copyrighting) the photoshoots herself.

Was classically trained as a ballet dancer from an early age and danced solo at age thirteen for a local ballet company.

Sherilyn Fenn's December 1990 Playboy pictorial was the original inspiration for dying her hair from blonde to black.

Posed nude for the December 2002 issue of Playboy magazine. She was photographed by her then-future husband, Marilyn Manson.

Initially, her stage name was simply Dita, as a tribute to silent film actress Dita Parlo. However, Playboy required a surname for her December 2002 cover. She chose the name "Von Treese", which she found in a phonebook. But Playboy misspelled the name as "Von Teese", and she kept it ever since.

I always get billed as 'Dita, internationally known fetish supermodel'.

I'm really a small town girl from Michigan who has a good laugh that being a fancy-pants stripper got me here!

Some people say what I do isn't very liberating. I say it's pretty liberating to get $20,000 for 10 minutes work.

Neither of us is ready. I don't feel that we need to have children to validate our marriage and I don't need children to claim I'm a fulfilled woman.

I advocate glamour. Every day. Every minute.