"It costs a lot of money to look this cheap": remembering Dolly Parton's most iconic looks

There are style icons who got there because someone very expensive dressed them, and then there's Dolly Parton, who decided as a little girl exactly who she wanted to look like and then spent the next seventy-odd years doing it, whatever anyone else thought.

That's the bit people miss when they talk about the wigs and the rhinestones. Dolly wasn't styled into an image. She built one, on purpose, out of the things she loved — and then refused, decade after decade, to tone it down for anybody. In a world that keeps telling us to find our "signature style", she's the only one who actually managed it, and she managed it in 5-inch heels.

So today, let’s celebrate the looks that made her.

The blueprint: the "town tramp"

"Well, that's what I'm gonna be when I grow up."

Dolly Parton

Before the awards shows and the album covers, there was a woman in Dolly's hometown in Tennessee that everyone else in town looked down on. Dolly thought she was magnificent.

"She was flamboyant. She had bright red lipstick, long red fingernails," she remembered — plus "high-heeled shoes, little floating plastic goldfish in the heels of them, short skirts, low-cut tops, and I just thought she was beautiful."

Everything that came after — the hair, the nails, the glitter, the heels — traces straight back to a little girl deciding that the most looked-down-on woman in town had the best wardrobe in it. Honestly? Iconic behaviour.

1978: the green jumpsuit at the American Music Awards

right green, flower-covered, with sleeves that fell like a cape every time she moved her arms. She wore it to collect Favourite Country Album for New Harvest…First Gathering — the record where she took the wheel of her own career — and she looked like a woman who knew precisely what she'd just done.

If you've ever stood in front of your wardrobe on a big day wondering whether the loud thing is too much: this is your sign that the loud thing is the right thing.

1978: head-to-toe pink on the Heartbreaker cover

Pink was her colour and she never pretended otherwise. Shot by Ed Caraeff, the Heartbreaker cover is Dolly in pink from top to toe, no accent shades, no "just a pop of colour" hedging.

There's something radiatingly brilliant about a woman committing that hard to a single colour. Most of us buy the pink top and then bury it under a grey coat…never Dolly.

1980: the 9 to 5 office wardrobe

Proof she could do restraint — she just usually chose not to. As Doralee Rhodes she wore midi dresses, soft knits and slacks in muted colours, all of it ordinary…but always delivered in an extraordinary way…AND topped with that enormous blonde hair, of course.

That contrast is the whole joke and the whole point: the film is about a woman everyone underestimates because of how she looks. Dolly had been living that plot for twenty years by then.

Mid-80s: the Warhol Polaroid

Andy Warhol photographed her in full Dolly — the hair, the lashes, the technicolour makeup — and called her "the glittery country goddess from Tennessee".

When the man who built a career out of knowing exactly what an icon looks like points his camera at you, you've won.

1989: rhinestones at the Steel Magnolias premiere

A floor-length gown covered — genuinely covered — in rhinestones, worn to the Ziegfeld in New York. No subtlety, no "understated for the occasion", nothing dialled down for a room full of critics.

She caught a lot of flak over the years for looking "cheap". Her answer became the most quoted line she ever said off-stage: it costs a lot of money to look this cheap. She once joked it should go on her tombstone.

2008: leopard and hot pink on Backwoods Barbie

Leopard print set, bright pink trench, sitting on the back of a pickup truck — designed by Steve Summers, her longtime creative director, who spent years translating what was in her head into things you could actually wear on a stage.

The album title is her being completely upfront about the whole act: she knew what people saw when they looked at her, and she got there first, with better jokes.

The album title is her being completely upfront about the whole act: she knew what people saw when they looked at her, and she got there first, with better jokes.

2023: the Dallas Cowboys cheerleader outfit, at 77

At 77 years old, she performed at the Cowboys' halftime show in a cheerleader uniform, in front of a stadium, on live television.

There's no gentle way to describe how much confidence that takes. She'd earned every bit of it.

What she was actually teaching us

Dolly's wardrobe was always more than the rhinestones. It was about deciding what you love, wearing it on purpose, and being completely unbothered when someone tells you it's too much, too bright, too young, too tight or too anything.

She said it plainly: "It's true I look totally artificial. But I like to think I'm totally real where it really counts."

Most of us will never own a floor-length rhinestone gown. But we've all got a version of the pink — the thing we love, buy, and then leave hanging in the wardrobe because we've decided it's not really us, or it's a bit much for a Tuesday.

Wear it on a Tuesday. That's the whole lesson.

Thank you, Dolly x