sultry and feminine

Explore your sexy side with Dito Von Teese’s new lingerie and fragrance collection, which will be exclusively available at HSN beginning April 23, reports WWD on March 6.After her show at the Gramercy Theater in Manhattan, the sexy burlesque dancer celebrated the launch of her upcoming collection for HSN, which will include vintage-inspired lingerie sets, priced between $25 and $45, and fragrance for $75 a bottle.The lingerie will include flirty details like velvet, lace, ribbons and exotic prints. From cleavage-enhancing bras to leopard undies, the collection is sexy, sultry and feminine. “I spend exorbitant amounts of money of lingerie when I go shopping in Paris, and I think these pieces can really stand their own against the most expensive lingerie in the world,” Dita Von Teese told Instyle. “I’m really proud of that fact.”In line with the vintage theme, the fragrances will also be packaged in two antique glass bottles from the Thirties: a classic black glass pump atomizer for the Dita Von Teese fragrance, which features undertones of orange bergamot, pink pepper, Lapsang Souchong tea, magnolia, and raw amber. A ruby-colored perfume bottle is used for the Rouge scent.“I thought HSN would be the perfect way to introduce my brand to the American woman, because my goal with these products is to bring glamour and refinement to women at an affordable price,” Von Teese told. On his way home after a weird day on set in B-picture “Vampire’s Kiss” – where a long-repressed anxiety concerning closed-in spaces is suddenly reawakened in a coffin sequence – actor Jake Scully (Craig Wasson, the diminutive dick-flapping star of GHOST STORY) stops in at the iconic hot dog-shaped food stand for some take-out. The Pup was built in 1946 and one of the longest-surviving examples of programmatic or “novelty” architecture, meant to emulate the image of the product it sold as an eye-catching appeal to increasing car culture (and which also guaranteed it a place in every L.A. establishing montage). Originally installed at 311 N. La Cienaga, built by architect Milton Black (out of chicken wire and stucco) for the dance duo of Veloz and Yolanda, it was bought in 1971 by Eddie Blake, whose family still owns it. A year after BODY DOUBLE’s premiere, it had been moved to 329 North San Vicente Boulevard a few yards away, but was evicted from that location in 2005 to make way for a condo development that has never materialized. The hot dog homestead remains in a warehouse in Torrance, CA while the Blakes renegotiate a new spot. With Jake’s sorrows sufficiently doused at Barney’s, Doug offers him a place to crash on his beaten brown sofa at the hulking Hollywood Tower Apartments, a French Normandy style perched ominously on a hillside that now butts up against the Hollywood Freeway. Built in 1929 with investment money from actor George Raft, The Hollywood Tower became a popular residence for many Golden Age-era movie stars (most famously Humphrey Bogart), originally with 50 apartments (now 198). By the time BODY DOUBLE rolled around, the place had fallen into disrepair and was home to mostly senior citizens, which explains how a Barney’s bartender would be able to afford a pad in the former glamour-hub. The building has since been rejuvenated and has attempted to renew its image as culturally happenin’ with rooftop concerts and fashion shows, and in 1994 became the inspiration for Disney’s Twilight Zone Tower of Terror thrill ride (and subsequent movie). But run down or not, in BODY DOUBLE it still has one of the city’s most classic views of the Hollywood heartland, as illustrated when Jake poses before the window, framing a beautiful image of one of my fave L.A. landmarks, the Capitol Records building. Jake thinks he gets a lucky break when a new acquaintance met outside The Callboard, fellow actor Sam Bouchard (Gregg Henry of Jeff Lieberman’s JUST BEFORE DAWN), passes on his house-sitting gig to the homeless Jake. The job detail: hang out in one of the world’s most legendary houses, and make sure to water the plants every day after 6pm. Among the many LA landmarks in DePalma’s film, this one is hands-down the most iconic. Designed by Frank Lloyd Wright disciple John Lautner in 1960, the modernist unipedal spaceship structure corroborates film historian Thom Anderson’s assertion in his film-essay LOS ANGELES PLAYS ITSELF that Los Angeles’ modern architecture is associated, through the movies, with villainy – often serving as the domiciles of criminal types. The Chemosphere was first seen onscreen in an episode of THE OUTER LIMITS and would serve as the direct inspiration for criminal mastermind Eric Knox’ pad in CHARLIE’S ANGELS (2000). The Chemosphere isn’t the only Lautner house subject to suspect associations: THE BIG LEBOWSKI’s drug baron Jackie Trehorn lives at the Lautner-designed Sheats Goldstein Residence (built 1961-1963), and the Garcia House in LETHAL WEAPON 2 (a longtime residence of Vincent Gallo) collapses when Mel Gibson literally pulls the entire hillside house down with his pickup truck – itself an audacious statement against Lautner’s competence as an architect. And while Lautner was known for ostentatious design, the tacky interior of the house in BODY DOUBLE is a set, and its funicular railway is also remodelled on a soundstage. The house is on the east side of the Hollywood Hills, and hard to see from the road as you drive up – it’s only when you give up at a dead end and start back that you see it looming over the trees. The house is currently owned by Benedikt Taschen, of the German Taschen publishing house (who gives us all those breathtaking art books), but only after it sat on the market for so long that its un-sellability was even parodied on THE SIMPSONS. After meeting porn star Holly Body (Melanie Griffith) under the auspices of being a porn actor-turned wannabe director hoping to cast her, Jake treats Holly to a late night meal at the original Spago’s restaurant on the corner of Horn and Sunset Boulevard. From its opening in 1982 by the not-yet ubiquitous Wolfgang Puck and his wife Barbara Lazaroff, Spago’s was cemented as a Hollywood institution, a hot spot for celebrities who jammed the nearby streets with too many limos to count , and the official host of the Oscar afterparties for at least a decade. Indeed, as they make their way through the bustling lobby and Holly wins a game of passive-aggressive one-upmanship with Jake’s snotty actress friend, the atmosphere recalls a house party more than a formal dining establishment. “The original Spago on Sunset was to New American Cooking what Meet the Beatles was to rock & roll,” said Jonathan Gold of LA Weekly, “the one that changed the rules.” But tourists beware – the existing Spago in Beverly Hills, which Puck and Lazaroff opened in 1997, is not the location from the film – the original Spago’s closed in 2001.