Beyond the Male Gaze: Dita Von Teese Conquers Europe

Once again, Dita Von Teese brings her singular brand of spectacle to Oslo, this time with Nocturnelle, a lavish new production that follows her record-breaking Glamonatrix tour, still widely regarded as the most successful touring burlesque show of all time.

Now on a European run, Nocturnelle sees the queen of neo-burlesque return to a continent that has long embraced her theatrical, high-glamour aesthetic.

When Styletalk last spoke to Von Teese during her 2019 visit to Folketeateret in Oslo, she was in town with Glamonatrix. Asked whether the title hinted at something dominatrix-adjacent, she laughed: “Oh, absolutely! I can’t wait to have all of Norway surrendering in a cloud of glitter and glamour.”

“I’m just a dishwater blonde from a farming town in Michigan, I simply painted myself into a femme fatale,” she remarked during an appearance on Loose Women last year. In her book Your Beauty Mark, she expands on that ethos, offering a guide to cultivating one’s own version of the femme fatale.

Her beginnings, however, were far from gilded. By studying the icons of old Hollywood, Von Teese found herself more aligned with their carefully constructed glamour than with contemporary ideals of natural beauty. Born Heather Renee Sweet, she began her career as a stripper in the early 1990s – a world she has often described as revelatory. As she told The Guardian in an earlier interview: entering strip clubs felt like discovering a stage on which her difference could become her power. Amid the blonde, bikini-clad dancers of the era, she leaned into vintage striptease, corsets, opera gloves, and a deliberate embrace of artifice. What followed was not only a remarkable personal ascent, but a broader pin-up revival that rippled through fashion and popular culture.

Von Teese has long been unapologetic about her aesthetic philosophy. She has little interest in so-called natural beauty, favouring instead the transformative possibilities of glamour. Parisian streets, with their architectural drama, she has said, feel more like home than any sunlit Californian beach. Artifice, for her, is not deception but empowerment. Supermodels and rigid beauty standards never held much appeal. What captivated her instead was a kind of glamour that could be self-fashioned—achieved without surgical intervention or punishing regimes. It is, she has argued, a more democratic and ultimately more empowering ideal.

In the United States, burlesque historically catered to the male gaze. Modern burlesque, Von Teese contends, has shifted that dynamic. While she still embraces the label of “stripper,” her audience today tells a different story: it is overwhelmingly female. When asked why, she offered a characteristically nuanced answer. Part of the appeal lies in the spectacle itself, shows that blend striptease with humour, high fashion, and theatrical excess. But there is also something deeper at play: a reclaiming of sexuality. For many, the resurgence of burlesque and pin-up culture is about rejecting shame and asserting ownership over desire, even the desire to be seen as a sex object.

That stance, inevitably, invites criticism. Von Teese is frequently challenged on whether her work is antifeminist. Her response is typically brisk: if her audience is largely composed of women, how can it be? She has little patience for what she sees as an outdated critique, suggesting instead that discomfort with overt female sexuality remains one of feminism’s last taboos.

Renowned for producing some of the most opulent shows in burlesque history, Von Teese has set a gold standard for the modern revival. Her collaborators read like a roll call of couture and craft – from corsetier Mister Pearl to designer Jenny Packham, burlesque icon Catherine D’Lish, and shoemaker Christian Louboutin. With Nocturnelle, which is also the name of her lingerie line, she once again raises the bar. Early international reviews suggest a production of extraordinary scale and detail, reaffirming her position not merely as a performer, but as the defining architect of modern burlesque spectacle.