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"  Dita Von Teese is an old-fashioned girl. When I say this, I&amp;#039;m not referring to her style. The shiny black stilettos, the sheer, seamed stockings, and the black pleated skirt cinched by a wide belt at the waist and topped with a matching short-sleeved sweater may be pure 1950s New Look, but Von Teese carries it with such confidence that it all looks utterly contemporary. With her dark hair falling in a soft Lana Turner curl, alabaster skin, and carefully painted crimson lips, she would have looked perfectly at home here in the plush marble lobby of Paris&amp;#039;s Le Grand hotel \u2014 where she is currently staying \u2014 half a century ago, yet she also regularly tops the best-dressed lists now.  So when I say old-fashioned, I&amp;#039;m talking about attitude. In November 2005, Von Teese married her partner of almost five years, the flamboyant artist, filmmaker, and goth-metal rock star Marilyn Manson, in a private ceremony at home in Los Angeles, then exchanged vows again in a more lavish event at a friend&amp;#039;s castle in Ireland a week later. On December 29, 2006, she filed for divorce. But she swears that when they wed, she thought it would be forever. &amp;quot;I would not get married if I didn&amp;#039;t believe in it,&amp;quot; she says firmly. &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;ve always believed in tradition. I think both of us did, at the time.&amp;quot; Then it wasn&amp;#039;t just about having a great party? &amp;quot;No, it wasn&amp;#039;t that way at all!&amp;quot; she says, genuinely shocked. &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;ve even had people come to me since, saying, &amp;#039;Well, didn&amp;#039;t you have an open relationship?&amp;#039; No! Never! We were completely monogamous. I think people thought we were real free and open, but we really believed in commitment and tradition and our vows. But sometimes people change their ideas, I suppose....&amp;quot;  Nowadays, when a celebrity couple splits, it is common for both sides to go rushing to the media almost as quickly as to their lawyers. But Von Teese is old-fashioned here, too, and whenever the conversation turns to the specifics of what went wrong, she quickly changes the subject. &amp;quot;You read a lot of things that are lies and a lot of things that are the truth,&amp;quot; she says of the media gossip. &amp;quot;I don&amp;#039;t have any interest in correcting all of the untruths because it&amp;#039;s better not to, really. It is personal, and I don&amp;#039;t want to go accusing. There are two sides to every story.&amp;quot; This much is clear: Something happened. Something catastrophic enough to have her call a moving truck the day before Christmas, move into a rental home, and book a flight out to Boise, Idaho, the following morning to spend the holiday with her family. &amp;quot;Let&amp;#039;s just say that it must have been something pretty bad for me to move out of the house after six years together and to pack up my stuff on Christmas Eve,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;I loved him, and this was the most painful thing I have ever had to go through. It&amp;#039;s been really difficult. It&amp;#039;s not what I expected when I got married, and I felt like I&amp;#039;d found the man of my dreams. But sometimes things change overnight, and you have to make a choice as to whether you&amp;#039;re going to respect yourself and say, &amp;#039;I&amp;#039;m not going to accept this. This is not okay.&amp;#039; I&amp;#039;m not the first woman, or the last, to go through what I&amp;#039;m going through. I just keep reminding myself of that.&amp;quot; Dita Von Teese, 34, was born Heather Sweet and grew up in small-town Michigan and later Orange County, California. Marilyn Manson was once Brian Warner of Canton, Ohio. Both have reinvented themselves, designed completely new personae, which Von Teese agrees was part of the initial attraction. &amp;quot;I think we always had a lot in common that way, that we both created characters for ourselves and we&amp;#039;re both from Middle America.&amp;quot;  They originally met at a vintage-clothing show, but their relationship began when Von Teese was invited to one of his concerts in January 2001. It was Manson&amp;#039;s birthday, so she took a bottle of absinthe backstage for him. They drank it together, and five days later she was still on the tour bus. But these days, she says, &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m more of a champagne-cocktail kind of girl. I&amp;#039;m not much of a drinker \u2014 or a drug user \u2014 on a regular basis.&amp;quot; But she also says that Manson&amp;#039;s recreational habits weren&amp;#039;t the main problem. &amp;quot;I know who I married,&amp;quot; she says, shrugging, &amp;quot;so it wasn&amp;#039;t some surprise.&amp;quot; As well as drink and drugs, other reports about the breakup have mentioned Lindsay Lohan, but she dismisses that as &amp;quot;sensationalism. I don&amp;#039;t know, but I don&amp;#039;t think that&amp;#039;s part of our story.&amp;quot; The name that crops up most in the press, however, is that of Evan Rachel Wood, the 19-year-old actress and star of Thirteen, whom Manson, 38, has cast in his upcoming movie, Phantasmagoria. &amp;quot;No comment&amp;quot; is all Von Teese will say, but I can&amp;#039;t help noticing that her hands \u2014 beautifully manicured, of course, and painted the same red as her lips \u2014 are shaking.  In all of this, one thing is crystal clear: Von Teese isn&amp;#039;t interested in Manson&amp;#039;s money. When she decided the marriage was over, she didn&amp;#039;t change the locks on their home. She left it. She did take their Devon rex cats, because there was no one to feed them and it seemed like the right thing to do. She won&amp;#039;t discuss the pets, but she&amp;#039;s happy to state that she wants little else. &amp;quot;I fit the gold-digger image, I suppose,&amp;quot; she says with a wry smile. &amp;quot;But anyone who knows me knows that I was never going to be that way.&amp;quot; We meet only weeks after Von Teese moved out of the marital home, and she&amp;#039;s clearly still hurting, the feelings still raw. &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m just throwing myself into my work,&amp;quot; she says with a nervous laugh. She has a Web site selling her stockings, calendars, and photographs. She&amp;#039;s working on a second book, about &amp;quot;eccentric beauty.&amp;quot; She&amp;#039;s also on tour for M.A.C. Cosmetics&amp;#039; campaign against AIDS (she rides a giant lipstick like a mechanical bull), and she&amp;#039;s planning a big, Busby Berkeley\u2013style burlesque revue. She&amp;#039;s in Paris, a city she loves, for the couture shows, and in what she describes as &amp;quot;a childhood dream come true,&amp;quot; she also stepped out on the runway for Jean Paul Gaultier. &amp;quot;I think he appreciates women who are willing to dress in an eccentric way \u2014 women who aren&amp;#039;t just trying to follow fashion.&amp;quot; These are the women Von Teese admires, too. She loves Gwen Stefani and Madonna for their fearless style, but her real icons are the stars of old movies: Hedy Lamarr, Rita Hayworth, and Dita Parlo, the silent star from whom she took her name. &amp;quot;They were created beauties; they were made to be glamorous,&amp;quot; she says. Does she ever go out without makeup? &amp;quot;Um, sure! I like makeup, but I don&amp;#039;t always wear red lips. I&amp;#039;m not wearing red lips to go to my yoga class!&amp;quot; A natural blonde, Von Teese thinks she&amp;#039;ll now be forever black. &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;ve always wanted to have dark hair and play the image of the femme fatale without actually being one.&amp;quot; She stops and laughs at herself. &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m not really fatale at all, as I&amp;#039;m sure you can tell!&amp;quot; When she started stripping, she saw it as &amp;quot;another opportunity to play dress-up. I think my shows please women with the costumes and the fantasy of it all. I&amp;#039;m very much a girl&amp;#039;s girl; I&amp;#039;m not the mantrap, home-wrecker kind of girl at all.&amp;quot; When I wonder how long she can carry on, she points out that her idol Gypsy Rose Lee had a lengthy career because she changed her act according to her age. &amp;quot;So who knows?&amp;quot; she says, smiling. &amp;quot;If you&amp;#039;d asked me when I was 21 what I was going to be doing now, I would have said, &amp;#039;There&amp;#039;s no way I&amp;#039;ll be doing a feather-fan dance with hardly any clothes on when I&amp;#039;m 34! That&amp;#039;s so old!&amp;#039;&amp;quot; As for her future love life, a few men have made discreet inquiries through friends as to whether she&amp;#039;s ready to date yet. &amp;quot;But I&amp;#039;m not. I will be. By the time this article comes out, I&amp;#039;m going to be ready!&amp;quot; she says with a laugh. &amp;quot;I still look at it like I&amp;#039;m married, technically. It is kind of silly, I know. But I&amp;#039;m not officially divorced yet, so I have a conscience about things. And I feel like I&amp;#039;ll come out better in the end if I take my time and get through it and feel all the pain, do all that emotional cleansing.&amp;quot; She&amp;#039;s not looking for any specific type, she says. Just a nice guy. &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m excited, in a way, about the adventure of life and what&amp;#039;s next. Because I firmly believe that when one door closes, another one opens somewhere, and every cloud has a silver lining. But it&amp;#039;s easy to tell yourself that sometimes and harder to make your heart really feel it.&amp;quot; "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.harpersbazaar.com/culture/features/a71/dita-von-teese-0507/>