When I was a little girl, I watched all old movies. My mother liked old movies, and she loved shopping for antiques, so I was around old things all the time.
I love glamour and artificial beauty. I love the idea of artifice and dressing up and makeup and hair.
Some days are just bad days, that's all. You have to experience sadness to know happiness, and I remind myself that not every day is going to be a good day, that's just the way it is!
I really enjoy watching people like Madonna, or Cher, or Barbra Streisand on the red carpet. I want to see people wearing exciting things that are different and to know that they're not just looking for the latest, most normal thing.
I like having my cellphone. I like the Internet. I like being different.
When I started performing, there was no Internet; I didn't really have anything to copy. I kind of had to just make up what I thought burlesque was, based on photographs of Sally Rand or whatever.
Every one of my products - my lingerie, my perfume, and everything that I do beauty-related with regard to building my burlesque shows - is just me.
Me personally, I want to entertain people above all. When you look back at burlesque in history and the real golden age of burlesque, those entertainers were there to entertain, and there wasn't usually some big political message behind what they were doing.
Don't underestimate the cosmetic power of sunglasses. It's worth spending a bit of money on a quality pair. I usually go for Dior or Louis Vuitton.
But I'm not the girl who changes into flats because my feet are tired at the end of the night. I go the distance. I go all the way.
Thanks to my mother, people tell me I look younger than I am, especially without make-up. And I suppose my father had a part in making me more frugal with my money.
I don't work with a stylist, I don't work with a glam squad to get me together for the red carpet, I really enjoy the time it takes to do it myself, to choose my clothes and do my own makeup and my own hair.
My beauty icons are women whose images are self-created.
I feel empowered the fact that I can look the way that I do on stage and in photos - I can look that way any time I want. And I feel like it's important message to other women that they can do it, too.
I suppose women are attracted to the bad-boy image sometimes because it's fun to have an adventure. It's like eating junk food... it's fun at the time, but ultimately not the best choice.
I have been obsessed with seamed stockings my whole life, and I would collect vintage ones that were made in the '40s and '50s with the authentic styling of the keyhole, the welt, the reinforced toe and heels, French or Cuban heels, and hand-stitched seams.
I think as someone who collects beautiful things from the past, the thing that I miss the most about modernism and the things I lament about the past are everyday things that you would use were made more beautifully.
Well, when I was fifteen years old I worked in a lingerie store and that's how I feel in love with vintage lingerie because I wanted to know the history of it.
I don't have long-standing regrets; they pass as I see how things are meant to be.
As a little girl growing up in a small farming town in Michigan, my idols were women like Marlene Dietrich and Rita Hayworth.
