THE GAME CHANGER TM | JULY/AUGUST <strong>2018</strong> 108
THE GAME CHANGER In your current show "Dita Von Teese and The Copper Coupe Tour" you have another model on stage with you, Gia Genevieve. What inspired you to cast her in your show? I had always wanted to have a blonde bombshell in the show. I had a hard time finding this kind of quintessential “ Playboy ” blonde. I met Gia a few times over the years and she always had this effervescence, and she was sexy and fun. I knew she wasn’t a dancer, but I wondered if I could teach her how to do my bubble bath act, simplify it and have her get her personality across on stage. She’s a lot of fun to watch and she’s the perfect example of you don’t have to be dancing all over the place and doing backflips on stage to be wildly entertaining. Tell me about your collaboration with Absolut Elyx for the "Dita Von Teese and The Copper Coupe Tour". Being famous for bathing in a giant cocktail glass, I was open to a partnership with a cocktail company. I loved the ideas that Elyx had. They were just about beautiful, whimsical imagery that’s a tribute to what they do with their copper distillery. I was very familiar with their brand and loved the idea of making these tributes in the show to their imagery. I took a giant shell and dipped it in their signature copper. And I made a cocktail glass that’s a tribute to their style. We had a lot of fun creating the show and bringing it all together. What other imagery onstage will reflect this tour's name, The Copper Coupe? With every tour, I’ve redone a version of my martini glass act. I have a six-piece set of gigantic glasses at this point. I could have a giant cocktail party! I’m always thinking, “ How can I one up that number and make it fresh and new?” For this tour, one of the most exciting parts is the costume. I collaborated with my longtime creative partner, Catherine D’Lish, we put our heads together and came up with the most extravagant costume we’ve ever done, to date. A big part of making the show was this gown. I can’t tell because I’m wearing it on stage, but from what people are telling me it lights up the entire room. “I always felt like I was going to quit and have a child, because I always thought I wanted them. More recently I have given thought to the unsustainable population growth and global climate change.” You're the Swarovski Queen. I'm assuming everything is crystallised…. Everything is crystallised on this costume. We haven’t weighed it yet, but I keep asking to. It’s completely covered, and we’re using a new version of their aurora borealis stone. They’re cut like diamonds, and the effect is mind-boggling. People have been asking if my costume is electrified or plugged in. It’s really something to see under the lights. You've been quoted as saying that burlesque is a new kind of feminism. How so? It’s become that for a lot of women. The feminist movement must be respectful of other women’s ideals of what it is, and what it means. More than ever, we as women have to respect each other’s choices. Like I always say, and this is the truth, my audience is mainly female. My social media following is about 85 percent female. When I started in the 1990s I had a lot of male fans, and when I was a Playboy model I had a lot of male fans. It shifted in the early 2000s when I came out with a book and told my story about why I loved pinup, why I loved burlesque, and what it meant to me to have that to look to for my beauty icons. That resonated with a lot of people and I could feel that was when it all started to shift, when I exhibited my vulnerability about why I love this. I like to say that it’s an alternative feminist movement. What do you say to women who cry out that burlesque is an objectification? Something that could have, in the past, been considered degrading to women, I think that idea has been turned upside down when my audience is mainly female. They’re getting inspiration from this and feeling like they can harness their own sensual power in a different way and be in control of it. I would never say that striptease and burlesque should be for everyone. I have always loved things that walk that fine line, where one person looking at it thinks it’s inspiring and magical, and another person thinks it’s dirty and bad. It’s interesting to me the way people see things. I find things that are polarising to be interesting. 109 JULY/AUGUST <strong>2018</strong> | TM