Dita: Stripteese


Book Description

Famed photographer Sheryl Nields brings burlesque superstar Dita Von Teese to life in a series of flip books that capture the dancer′s most intimate performances. A perfect collectible book for fans of Dita, classic burlesque devotees, or for anyone who loves a playful and beautifully packaged book, DITA: STRIPTEASE is an exquisite visual tribute to this one-of-a-kind performer, featuring three of her most beloved dances: Martini Glass Show: Performed all over the world, the martini glass show is Dita′s most famous burlesque act. Featuring her in her "Diamonds in the Buff" costume, Dita performs a traditional striptease that culminates with her bathing herself in an oversize martini glass, complete with olive sponge. Bird of Paradise Show: Inside a posh gilded Victorian birdcage, burlesque′s brightest star reinvents the classic feather fan dance with two lush oversize feather fans of exotic, rare magenta pheasant feathers. In an extraordinary costume of beautifully curved feathers, Dita spins around on her golden perch, and treats audiences to an unforgettable wet and wild finale as sparkling water showers over her body. Classic Striptease: This striptease features Dita dressed in a vintage suit complete with a veiled hat, seamed stockings, and sky-high stilettos. Audiences get a glimpse into Dita′s personal wardrobe-and what she reveals underneath it!




Your Beauty Mark


Book Description

From burlesque show to fashion runway, magazine cover to Internet video, fashion icon and “burlesque superheroine” (Vanity Fair) Dita Von Teese has undergone more strokes of red lipstick, bursts of hair spray, boxes of blue-black hair dye and pats of powder in a month than a drag queen could dream of in a lifetime. Whether she’s dazzling audiences swirling in a towering martini glass in Swarovski-covered pasties and stilettos or sparking camera flashes on the red carpet, one reality is constant: for this self-styled star, beauty is an art. Now, for the first time in her Technicolor career, Dita divulges the beauty wisdom that keeps her on international best-dressed lists and high-profile fashion show rosters in this illustration and photography-filled opus. In Your Beauty Mark: The Ultimate Guide to Eccentric Glamour, Dita and co-writer Rose Apodaca take you through every step of Dita’s glamour arsenal, and includes friends—masters in makeup, hair, medicine, and exercise as well as some of the world’s most eccentric beauties—for authoritative advice. This 400-page book is packed with sound nutrition and exercise guidance, skincare and scent insight, as well as accessible techniques for creating bombshell hairstyles and makeup looks. Among the hundreds of lavish color photographs, instructive step-by-step images and original illustrations by Adele Mildred, this inspiring resource shares the skills, history, and lessons you need to enhance your individual gifts and realize your own beauty mark.




Advanced Style


Book Description

Advanced Style is Ari Seth Cohen’s blog-based ode to the confidence, beauty, and fashion that can only be achieved through the experience of a life lived glamorously. It is a collection of street fashion unlike any seen before—focused on the over-60 set in the world’s most stylish locales. The (mostly) ladies of Advanced Style are enjoying their later years with grace and panache, marching to the beat of their own drummer. These timeless images and words of wisdom provide fashion inspiration for all ages and prove that age is nothing but a state of mind. Ari Seth Cohen started his blog inspired by his own grandmother’s unique personal style and his lifelong interest in the put-together fashion of vibrant seniors. Each of his subjects sparkles like a diamond after long years spent refining and perfecting their individual look and approach to life. The Advanced Style book will showcase, in luscious full-color, the best of the blog, but will also act as a true guidebook with all-new material featuring wardrobes, interviews, stories, and advice from a cadre of his most chic subjects, along with a large selection of never-before-seen photography—fresh off of sidewalk catwalks around the world!




Neo-Burlesque


Book Description

The neo-burlesque movement seeks to restore a sense of glamour, theatricality, and humor to striptease. Neo-burlesque performers strut their stuff in front of audiences that appreciate their playful brand of pro-sex, often gender-bending, feminism. Performance studies scholar and acclaimed burlesque artist Lynn Sally offers an inside look at the history, culture, and philosophy of New York’s neo-burlesque scene. Revealing how twenty-first century neo-burlesque is in constant dialogue with the classic burlesque of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, she considers how today’s performers use camp to comment on preconceived notions of femininity. She also explores how the striptease performer directs the audience’s gaze, putting on layers of meaning while taking off layers of clothing. Through detailed profiles of iconic neo-burlesque performers such as Dita Von Teese, Dirty Martini, Julie Atlas Muz, and World Famous *BOB*, this book makes the case for understanding neo-burlesque as a new sexual revolution. Yet it also examines the broader community of “Pro-Am” performers who use neo-burlesque as a liberating vehicle for self-expression. Raising important questions about what feminism looks like, Neo-Burlesque celebrates a revolutionary performing art and participatory culture whose acts have political reverberations, both onstage and off.




Burlesque and the Art of the Teese/Fetish and the Art of the Teese


Book Description

On one side, Dita Von Teese shares the beauty of the burlesque world, with bubblegum dreams and show tunes to strip to. Flip over for fantasies in fetish with dramatic costumes and the allure of submission. Burlesque and the Art of the Teese "I advocate glamour. Every day. Every minute." I'm a good dancer and a nice girl, but I'm a great showgirl. I sell, in a word, magic. Burlesque is a world of illusion and dreams and of course, the striptease. Whether I am bathing in my martini glass, riding my sparkling carousel horse, or emerging from my giant gold powder compact, I live out my most glamorous fantasies by bringing nostalgic imagery to life. Let me show you my world of gorgeous pin-ups, tantalizing stripteases, and femmes fatales. I'll give you a glimpse into my life, but a lady never reveals all. Fetish and the Art of the Teese You may have come for the fetish. Or you may just be sneaking a peek at this mysterious and peculiar other side. No matter what you've come for, there is something for you to indulge in. My world of fetish may not be the one that you would expect. As a burlesque performer, I entice my audience, bringing their minds closer and closer to sex and then -- as good temptress must -- snatching it away. As a fetish star, I apply the same techniques. . . . An opera-length kid leather glove, a strict wasp waist, an impossibly high patent leather heel, a severely painted red lip. . . . Come with me into my world of decadent fetishism.




Roy Stuart


Book Description

A BOOK OF EROTIC POWER RARELY SEEN. ""ANIMAL SEXUALITY DIFFERS FROM EROTICISM IN THAT HUMAN SEXUALITY IS LIMITED BY TABOOS AND THE DOMAIN OF EROTICISM IS THAT OF THE TRANSGRESSION OF THESE TABOOS"" IS HOW GEORGES BATAILLE EXPLAINS EROTICISM. CASTING A NEW LIGHT ON THAT MOST HUMAN OF ACTS, ROY STUART PRESENTS US HERE WITH A BOOK OF EROTIC POWER RARELY SEEN. THE BRILLIANT TECHNIQUE AND SKILLFULL PRESENTATION OF HIS VIDEOS AND STILLS PRESENT SEXUALITY DIRECTLY AND WITHOUT PRUDERY. THEY HAVE EARNED THIS PARIS BASED AMERICAN A REPUTATION AS A GRANDMASTER OF THE EROTIC CAMERA. HIS PHOTOS AND GLIMPSE VIDEOS HAVE ACQUIRED CULT STATUS EVEN AMONGST EXPERIENCED HARDCORE FANS, AND WITH GOOD REASON, FOR THEY REPRESENT AN EXQUISITE REPRESENTATION OF THE FORBIDDEN. IN TURNS VOYEURISTIC, IN TURNS NARRATIVE, HIS PICTURES WITH THEIR DISARMING EXPLICITNESS SUBVERT TRADITIONAL MORAL CODES AND FORCE THE VIEWER TO REEVALUATE HIS OR HER PRECONCEIVED NOTIONS OF SEXUALITY. THE PHOTOGRAPHS ASSEMBLED IN THIS BOOK, WHICH IN ANOTHER CONTEXT MIGHT HAVE BEEN CONDEMNED, INSTEAD GIVE A FASCINATING GLIMPSE BEHIND THE SCENES OF ROY STUART'S MAGICAL THEATRE OF TRANSGRESSION AND TABOO.




Fetish Goddess: Dita


Book Description

Dita is the most popular model of today. Her distinctive style is a unique combination of retro glamor, pin-up and high-art eroticism, and always perfect down to the smallest accessories. She only works with the best photographers - Baker, Czernich, James & James, Weathers - and, combined with her clear vision of how she wants to look, the result is always 100% stunning and 100% Dita. Dominant or submissive, damsel in distress or provocative French maid, this genuine fetishist has laced herself up and paraded around in the highest of high heels - a true fetish goddess.




The Little Book of Bettie


Book Description

A lifestyle guide inspired by the Queen of Pinups -- Bettie Page -- The Little Book of Bettie offers real advice on fashion, makeup, fitness, and more for today's modern woman who loves a little dose of retro. The celebrated Queen of Pinups styled her own iconic hair, did her own makeup, fashioned her own swimsuits, and was ahead of her time in endless ways, making her a source of inspiration to stars like Madonna, Beyoncéi>, and Katy Perry. Against the backdrop of the conservative 1950s, Bettie Page was an advocate of pleasure, fun, liberation, and body-positivity. There's so much to be learned from her! Within The Little Book of Bettie you'll find: Bettie's remarkable backstory Retro fashion and styling tips Vintage hair and makeup lessons Bettie-inspired fitness routines DIY pinup accessory how-tos Advice from "Bettie Babes" like Dita Von Teese, modern-day pinups and entertainers, and everyday women who love Bettie! Filled with both color and black-and-white images, The Little Book of Bettie is a beautifully gifty, celebratory look at the groundbreaking style of one of the greatest icons of pop culture.




Horrible Prettiness


Book Description

Robert Allen's compelling book examines burlesque not only as popular entertainment but also as a complex and transforming cultural phenomenon. When Lydia Thompson and her controversial female troupe of "British Blondes" brought modern burlesque to the United States in 1868, the result was electric. Their impertinent humor, streetwise manner, and provocative parodies of masculinity brought them enormous popular success--and the condemnation of critics, cultural commentators, and even women's rights campaigners. Burlesque was a cultural threat, Allen argues, because it inverted the "normal" world of middle-class social relations and transgressed norms of "proper" feminine behavior and appearance. Initially playing to respectable middle-class audiences, burlesque was quickly relegated to the shadow-world of working-class male leisure. In this process the burlesque performer "lost" her voice, as burlesque increasingly revolved around the display of her body. Locating burlesque within the context of both the social transformation of American theater and its patterns of gender representation, Allen concludes that burlesque represents a fascinating example of the potential transgressiveness of popular entertainment forms, as well as the strategies by which they have been contained and their threats defused.




The Costumes of Burlesque


Book Description

The Costumes of Burlesque: 1866-2018 is the first volume to inclusively document burlesque costume from its birth in the 1860’s through the global burlesque movement in 2018. This lushly illustrated book presents the history and development of this American art form by documenting the origins, influencers, and genuine articles that created its aesthetic. Showcases of legendary performers, including Lydia Thompson, Gypsy Rose Lee, Sally Rand, Bettie Page, Kitten Natividad, and Dita Von Teese, demonstrate costume styles through the years. This guide gives readers a clear view of how burlesque costume looked and why. It teaches collectors, burlesque performers, and fans alike to recognize vintage pieces for what they are and to design their own costumes with inspiration from the originals. By including detailed costume documentation, over 400 images, and interviews with prominent costume designers such as Catherine D’Lish and Garo Sparo, The Costumes of Burlesque brings 150 years of burlesque costume history to life.