In a darling drawing room in a Paris atelier up a discreet Montmartre alleyway, the fancy-pants stripper is showing me her new knickers and bras. There is ornate stitching and clever cantilevering; a removable rose affixed between the cups; showgirl-style nipple tassels. Ten pieces in all, in colours including butterscotch gold and blue-grey. They’re manufactured by Wonderbra and have been designed by Dita Von Teese. She’s the burlesque performer hitherto most famous for taking her clothes off in elaborate routines, and for being married – briefly – to Goth-rocker Marilyn Manson. Her own vital stats: height 5ft 6in, bust 32C, waist 23in (or 16in when strapped into the corsets she wore five days a week, every week, during her ten years working in a Los Angeles strip club), fortune considerable.

She’s come a long way since her strip-club days. After 2006’s book, Burlesque and the Art of the Teese/Fetish and the Art of the Teese – a coffee-table guide to burlesque and fetish – this autumn brings the latest extension of Dita’s world: the Europe-wide launch of her Wonderbra range.

Dita has flown in from her home in Los Angeles to launch the undies in Paris, which feels like a very Dita city. She’s very proud of her creations, she says, as she sits bolt upright and poised in a chair. Her complexion is porcelain-creamy, her naturally blonde hair dyed raven-black and sculpted into a perfect chignon, her surgically enhanced cleavage plunging. Her heels are by Louboutin (“of course”) and her dress by Dior. Even her manners are old-school rarefied. Dita the diva is about detail. Yes, she titters with an arch of spindly eyebrow, she even colours her hair downstairs. Would she ever revert to her natural state? “I think there are enough retro-styled blonde modern women,” comes the reply, “like Gwen Stefani or Christina Aguilera.”

Of course, there are plenty of sexy women who are willing to get their kit off in front of crowds or cameras (and sure, Dita’s done Playboy). But none has parlayed her disrobing into lucrative partnerships with spirit label Cointreau, cosmetics line MAC, various fashion designers (Jean Paul Gaultier supplied Dita’s wedding dress) and now Wonderbra. “All of the brand associations that I’ve ever had have been strong and really well thought out. And things that I’ve waited for.”

How has Dita Von Teese accomplished all this? Laser-brained dedication to her craft, that’s how. You might say that craft is just stripping for middle-class folk, but the young girl who dreamt of being a ballerina is now a 35-year-old who understands the art of performance, and drama, and music. “I believe one of the secrets of my success is getting nearly nude and wet in every show.” So Dita never takes off all her clobber. Always leave them wanting more.

Her most famous routine involves stripping inside a giant cocktail glass, which led to the Cointreau partnership. “I always knew that I should have a collaboration with a spirit brand, too. And I’d been approached by lots of them. It was never sophisticated enough. And finally Cointreau came along and they had really great ideas and they wanted me to build this great show, and make a signature cocktail.” She beams peachily. “And it was perfect.”

Dita Von Teese is a body and a look and a brand. She built it from scratch, with an eye to the future. Even in her first proper job, as a dancer in an LA strip club, she was assiduously investing $1,000 per month in mutual funds. “And I still have all that money.” Even then, 15 years ago, Dita could earn $6,000 for two minutes’ performance, so she still had enough money left to buy a Thirties Chrysler.

Since then, she’s worked hard to build – and protect – the brand. She’s a steely-eyed entrepreneur who discovered a niche in the market, and worked hard to fill it with her own shapely curves. “At the time the whole fetish world was about shock – tattooed, pierced, hardcore, serious bitches with whips. I set out to be the best darn retro-fetish model since Bettie Page.”

The collaboration with Wonderbra is a natural extension of all this. Dita Von Teese has been obsessed with lingerie, especially the vintage kind, since landing a job in an Orange County underwear shop named Lady Ruby’s when she was 15. She’s been collecting undergarments for two decades, and is something of an expert on different eras’ different shapes. Her Wonderbra collection is “designed to actively encourage women of all ages to harness their inner glamour and beauty”. With regards to the bra with the magnetic clasp, it’s perhaps designed to let sausage-fingered men do some easy unharnessing. Not that Dita Von Teese is thinking about men. She’s all about women. For a stripper, this is interesting.

“I’m really fortunate that a lot of my fans are women who are taking the inspiration of burlesque and pin-up and getting in touch with their inner bombshell,” she says. “That’s something I did long before I was a performer. I just enjoyed it in my real life. I like the idea of being a natural seductress, so it doesn’t seem contrived. In the same way that I think a great burlesque, a great striptease, is always about when it looks natural and easy and effortless. I feel the same about one-on-one seduction.”

Dita Von Teese was born Heather Renée Sweet in small-town Michigan, the middle of three daughters. Her mum was a manicurist, her dad worked for a company making graphite. “I was a very quiet, painfully shy person. They used to try to send me to speech classes ’cause I was afraid of speaking. Terrified if I was called on in class. All I did was take ballet class. And play dress-up.” She’s always loved clothes, fashion, as an agent of transformation. “The way that they can turn you into whoever you want to be.” To this day she feels insecure if she hasn’t dressed up, or hasn’t applied her warpaint.

The family moved to California with Dad’s job when Heather was 13. Shortly afterwards, her parents divorced. Aside from ballet, young Heather had a passion for old films, which she’d watch with her mother. She’s previously said that, “Dita Von Teese is someone I always dreamt of being when I was little.” Explaining this now, she says that this dream revolved around these silver-screen icons.

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