Book Review: Your Beauty Mark By Dita Von Teese

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dita

This morning, I woke up to an email from Amazon alerting me to the fact that the price of the Kindle Edition of Dita Von Teese’s book had been marked down to mere $1.99, the price of a download of a mindless reality show. So of course, I bought it immediately.

Dita Von Teese is a person who comes up fairly frequently in discussions in the color and style community. She is someone who is viewed as successfully changing her entire look, even her season. She may be the only natural blonde that David Zyla has let into Vital Spring, and this is due to her fastidiousness at keeping up her jet black hair and porcelain skin, despite what she started with.

At first glance, this approach to beauty and style may seem like the very opposite of the kind of thing I like to espouse, and what the analysts I admire also try to do. But I actually found her overall message to be very similar. To become the person you want to be, you need to look the part, and you need to dedicate the time to achieving it. Bring it into all aspects of your life, whether you’re lounging at home, going to Pilates, or appearing on stage in front of thousands of people. She has tons of tips in the book for how to do this, many of which are very inexpensive and achievable. Just taking the proper time when it comes to personal grooming makes a huge difference in terms of how the world sees you. As she points out, she can do her basic look in ten minutes and it actually doesn’t take any more time than less pulled-together looks.

Of course, the book is full of her beauty tips and what she does, so if you are after a similar aesthetic, this book will be incredibly useful to you. It’s not my personal taste for myself, but I still found it to be an inspiring read. She describes how she has taken bits and pieces from the 1920s through the 1950s, and the looks of various movie stars of the period, and combined them into a signature style that is all her own. What it inspired me to do is the do the same with the things that I love, and surround myself and adorn myself with these things. Again, it isn’t faster or cheaper to have things that you don’t love or to dress in a way that is completely banal. We can all achieve our own kind of glamour in our lives, one that speaks to our own aesthetic.

Your Beauty Mark: The Ultimate Guide to Eccentric Glamour, Dita Von Teese, Dey Street Books, 2015. $1.99 (Kindle Edition).

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3 Comments on Book Review: Your Beauty Mark By Dita Von Teese

  1. Shawna
    November 13, 2017 at 12:46 am

    That sounds really interesting. It makes sense really, and although she has created a look for professional reasons it works because she has embraced it so thoroughly. I don’t like the look and I think she looks a bit hard. To me the black hair looks unreal and forced but I can also see how it is done well and it never looks cheap. It does look like a costume to me but that might be my personality reacting to how I would feel if dressed like that. Nobody can say what feels natural and normal to someone else. Eccentric glamour, or any glamour is really not me but I’m impressed that she can create her look in ten minutes. My makeup takes 2 minutes but it probably takes 15 just to get my hair dried! I think that if your basic grooming and even the way you move your body speaks to your basic style/archetype then you certainly will look the part even if going to pilates class.

    Reply
    • stylesyntax
      November 13, 2017 at 4:15 pm

      Well, I should clarify that the look I’m talking about there is her “going to the store” look, not her full “drag,” as she calls it–it is a sleek bun and red lipstick versus a messy bun and lip gloss, not her full cat eye and foundation etc.

      Yes, David is also a proponent of always dressing your Image ID, even in casual settings. You never know who you’ll run into!

      Reply
  2. Sarah R.
    November 13, 2017 at 5:37 pm

    That’s a great price and I certainly paid a lot more than that to read it. I liked the book quite a bit. I am a little more on the eccentric glamour side than the natural beauty side naturally and I really admire her dedication to the whole look she’s made for herself.

    Reply

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