Dolly Parton: The meaning behind the songwriting icon’s more is more style | Canada Voices

The outsized, hyper-feminine style of Nashville icon Dolly Parton, who died Tuesday at the age of 80 after a brief battle with cancer, was fodder for many quips over her seven-decade career. Most of them were made by the icon herself.

Even in announcing her death, Parton’s nephew, Bryan Seaver, said his aunt requested to be laid to rest on a bed of cotton because, after a lifetime of rhinestones, she wanted to be comfortable. That “rhinestone rash” may have been among her top 10 list of self-parodying “pet peeves” on David Letterman, but it also serves as shorthand for her signature style.

The big-hearted bombshell cultivated her image with a mix of the sincere and the tongue-in-cheek, transforming big wigs, long acrylic nails and spangles of every description into an aesthetic wholly her own. In recent decades, Parton shaped that look in collaboration with creative director Steve Summers, whom she worked with for more than 30 years. (After spotting him as a performer at Dollywood, she paid for him to study at the Fashion Institute of Technology.) But she committed to the formula early on.

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Born into a sharecropper family in rural Tennessee, Parton rose from abject poverty to become a global icon. Growing up, the singer was enamoured with the tight clothes, bright makeup and bottle-blonde hair of the town tramp, she later recounted. She began accessorizing her dimpled smile, killer figure and joyful laugh with a teased bouffant and eye-catching outfits.

The caricature of the Southern belle combines glamour and folksiness, but Parton’s version also reflected defiance, dignity and self-deprecation. These qualities were integral to her art and business. “I’m not a fashion icon; I’m an eyesore,” she said. She often joked that she had a wig for every occasion. This was all while singing about being a strong woman and defying expectations, always with winsome good humour. (Remember, her first hit single was the sassy Dumb Blonde: “This dumb blonde ain’t nobody’s fool.”)

“It takes a lot of time and money to look this cheap, honey,” Parton wrote in her 1994 memoir. Her infamous quip echoes across decades of interviews. “I might look totally artificial but, underneath, my fans know I am totally real,” is a variation of the same. That over-the-top artificiality was integral to Parton’s image. “God didn’t make plastic surgeons so they could starve!” her character in 2012 musical comedy Joyful Noise says, nodding to the singer’s forthright admission of surgical interventions over the years.

Parton’s subtle fashion evolution mirrored her career shifts. In the 1970s, she opted for flowing sleeves and bell bottoms – such as the fuchsia bodysuit she wore to the 1977 Grammys – to go with the long curls she wore at the time.

After a few variety shows and countless TV specials, she was ready for the next stage – her close-up as a movie actress. For the 1980 premiere of 9 to 5, for which she also wrote the titular working-class anthem, she asked the movie’s costume designer, Ann Roth, for old Hollywood glamour, appearing in a pink lace strapless gown and matching feather stole. Touring the world with Kenny Rogers during the Islands in the Stream years in the later 1980s, she was all glamour. By the end of the decade, she was a superstar, and on the Steel Magnolias red carpet she leaned into the dramatic appeal of Mae West and Marilyn Monroe in beaded gowns by costume designer Tony Chase.

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Parton’s 2023 style memoir, Behind the Seams: My Life in Rhinestones, documents her penchant for brash glamour. Flashiness was frowned upon in her small town and, when she moved to Nashville at 18, record executives suggested she tone down her look. “I really enjoy being overdressed and gaudy because it kind of fits my personality,” she recounted. “It’s a good thing I was born a girl, otherwise I’d be a drag queen,” she would often say. As a proud LGBTQ icon, she appeared in the 2020 season finale of RuPaul’s Drag Race with drag star Nina West.

Over the years, Parton adopted a sprinkling of the fashion trends of the day, but not without, in her words, “Dolly-izing” them. Parton leaned into denim’s working-class roots during her 1990s bluegrass revival, for instance. It’s that era that underpins the capsule collection Parton launched with Khloé Kardashian’s denim brand Good American last year, which includes ‘Joleans’ flares, peplum denim corset tops and cutout bootcut jeans.

“I’ve always believed clothes can hold memories,” Parton said in the press release. A 50,000-square-foot warehouse on her property that archives every item the star has worn since 1964 attests to that.

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When she was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2022, Parton took inspiration from Elvis Presley, performing in a studded, bell-bottomed leather jumpsuit. The outfit was a fitting callback to her signature look during the period when she first rose to fame.

Whether it was cutaway legs, plunging necklines or even as a Bunny on the 1978 cover of Playboy, Parton was an astute businesswoman who took her work seriously. Yet her playful wit always shone, whether in a sequinned bodysuit as “Splash Woman” to announce a new water coaster at her amusement park, Dollywood, or a rhinestone version of the Dallas Cowboys cheerleader uniform consisting of a crop top and daisy dukes.

“In my bell-bottom jumpsuits with my rhinestones all aglow,” Parton sang in a 1979 tune for Johnny Carson, written in thanks to the late-night host for the regular appearances that helped boost her profile. The lyrics underline the performer’s style journey from “thirteen-dollar wigs” and polyester to Gucci, humble “pop beads to diamonds, from car coats to fur” on her road to stardom. Whether the sparkle was real or fake, Parton always dressed as big and boldly as she dreamed.