For someone who spent years rejecting the title of “feminist”, it’s a fitting contradiction that few have done more to demonstrate the power of femininity through fashion than Dolly Parton.
Already, the world feels a little less fabulous following Parton’s death this week, aged 80.
With her towering blonde wigs, bedazzled gowns (always cinched tightly at the waist) and long acrylic nails, the country music legend taught a generation of women that there’s nothing to fear in being too femme or too much. In fact, when wielded with poise, it can be our greatest weapon of defence.
“She was bold, feminine, flamboyant and sometimes outrageous, but always completely Dolly,” says Jackie Frank, fashion consultant and founding editor-in-chief of marie claire Australia.
Fashion stylist Jess Pecoraro agrees: “She took a look that could have easily been made into a joke and owned it with zero apology.”
Growing up in Tennessee, Parton learnt glamour and strength can go hand-in-hand for women who are often dangerously underestimated by observing “strumpets and trollops”.
“They were said to be trashy because they had blonde hair and wore nail polish and tight clothes. I thought they were beautiful,” she later said.
Parton carried that lesson throughout her life, embracing styles that would otherwise be discarded as tacky, singing about her beloved “rags of many colours” and famously declaring “it takes a lot of money to look this cheap!”
“Of course, she didn’t look cheap, she was a real beauty, inside and out. She looked equally great in tight jeans or skintight beaded gowns, all with towering heels,” says Kirstie Clements, author and former editor-in-chief of Vogue Australia.
Across her career, Parton worked closely with designers like Bob Mackie, Tony Chase and Ann Roth to create custom rhinestone-encrusted looks that were inspired by Hollywood’s Golden Age and the “high-effort glamour” of people like Marilyn Monroe.
Her stylist of over 30 years, Steve Summers, would often “Dolly-ise” pieces, buying them off the rack and getting them tailored to her taste: “really tight and really sparkly”.
As fashion stylist Natalie Petrevski puts it: “she always knew how to dress to be seen.”
For Parton, her approach to fashion was almost utilitarian: she wore what she felt good in and what got her noticed because it allowed her to do what she loved most: sing.
“That’s how I thought I looked best,” she told The Guardian in 2023. “It took me probably years longer to be taken serious, but I wasn’t willing to change it, and I figured if I had the talent, it’d show up.”
Parton’s style was subversive because she used fashion to create a persona she skewered in her life and work. She’s the blonde bimbo who was married to husband, Carl Dean, for nearly 60 years. The superficial ditz who wrote some of the most profound songs of all time with emotional acuity and depth.
Parton knew whatever projections people put onto her were more about them than they were about her, writing the image-making playbook for female stars today like Taylor Swift and Beyoncé decades before she’d ever get credit.
Some might even call it a great feminist legacy.
Here are just some of her best looks.
