Sartorial Onscreen

We always knew this day would come. If you haven’t already heard, it was announced today that country music icon Dolly Parton died at the age of 80.

I was in class when I received the news in the form of a text from my friend, who was sitting just a few feet away. Word spread like wildfire, and it quickly became all anyone on campus was talking about.

One girl I walked past said something that stuck out to me: “I didn’t know she was that old.”

It’s true. Parton didn’t exactly look like what you might picture when you think of an 80-year-old woman. But that’s just who she was. She did things her own way, and she never let anyone tell her who she could be.

Parton was, of course, so much more than the clothes she wore. She was a talented musician, lifelong philanthropist and beloved cultural icon. But the way she chose to dress and present herself in public is one of the many things that made her so remarkable.

I talk a lot about visual branding, and Parton was certainly the expert. Her gravity-defying blonde hairdos and maximalist sequin-covered outfits made her one of the most instantly recognizable celebrities of our time.

But Parton’s fabulous (and often risqué) style was more than a brand. It was a celebration of her unwavering commitment to staying true to herself, no matter what anybody else had to say.

Growing up, Parton said she modeled her look after the town tramp (her words, not mine). She looked at someone who was criticized and rejected by everyone around her and instead saw something to aspire to. And that’s what fashion, at its core, is all about.

It doesn’t matter what the fancy designers think. It doesn’t matter what lifestyle magazines or influencers think. The beautiful thing about fashion is that there are no rules. Every individual has the opportunity to express the truest version of themself through the way they dress.

Parton always went against the grain, but she was especially fearless when it came to how she aged. Society has a lot of ideas about what older women should be like. Really, society isn’t very fond of older women at all. But if a woman over the age of 35 does dare to appear in public, she’s expected to be matronly and reserved. She is not supposed to parade around in a rhinestone catsuit with her cleavage on display for all to see.

But just like when she was a little girl, Parton knew that those rules are made up to put women down. She knew exactly who she was, and she was true to herself right to the end. Nobody was ever going to tell her what she could and could not do.

“I don’t like to be like everybody else,” Parton told Barbara Walters in 1977. “I’ve often made the statement that I would never stoop so low as to be fashionable. That’s the easiest thing in the world to do.”

In the end, Parton did become fashionable, but not in the way she thought. She didn’t conform to trends. She set them. She refused to bend to the rules of fashion, so the rules of fashion bent to her.