That time Gucci put Dolly Parton in a show When Alessandro Michele paid tribute to the queen of maximalism
To tell the story of Dolly Parton's style, or even just catalogue it, across a career spanning decades and a thousand evolutions of country culture, you would probably need a book. And indeed, she wrote one herself: it was titled Behind the Seams: My Life in Rhinestones, and it chronicled her extraordinarily long career through her outfits. As the NY Times reports, at the time of her passing, Parton owned a wardrobe spread across more than 4,500 square metres, housing all the crystal-encrusted outfits she had worn throughout her career, along with approximately 2,000 pairs of shoes and 350 wigs. The wardrobe of an icon, no less — one who, however, kept a relative distance over the years from the world of European luxury fashion, which nonetheless paid her its tributes.
And one of the most legendary tributes the queen of country ever received in recent fashion history came from a designer every bit as maximalist as she was, who could not help but admire her: Alessandro Michele. The tribute arrived during a rather special show from the Michele era — Gucci's SS19 collection, presented at Le Palace in Paris, one of the many off-site shows the designer had organised for the brand. But how exactly was Dolly Parton honoured?
A Show of Icons Alone
Dolly Parton's inclusion in the SS19 collection was twofold. Shortly after the midpoint of the show, an oversized denim vest appeared on the runway, its back bearing an airbrush portrait of the singer. Two looks later, Dolly Parton's face appeared again, this time on a pink sweatshirt, printed in a technique reminiscent of Andy Warhol's portraits. The reference here was perhaps doubly apt, given that Dolly Parton actually knew Andy Warhol, who painted her portrait ten times in the 1980s, included her in his celebrated Polaroid series, and also interviewed her for Interview Magazine in July 1989, with a photo shoot by Herb Ritts.
The theme of the Gucci show was, in fact, that of great pop icons — from those who frequented Le Palace in its heyday to the Italian experimental theatre duo Leo de Berardinis and Perla Peragallo. Throughout the show, numerous looks echoed Dolly Parton's love of rhinestones and crystals, but there were also Mickey Mouse-shaped bags, hats evoking the style of Janis Joplin, and — most memorably — midway through the show, an interlude in which Jane Birkin herself performed Baby Alone in Babylone, the song Serge Gainsbourg had written for her eponymous album in the early 1980s.
After the show, Gucci dedicated a standalone post on its social media to the look in question, showing the denim vest in detail and describing it as «a tribute to the most honored female country performer». Parton, however, never publicly responded to this tribute, nor does it appear that the two ever met in public. There is another designer who did meet Dolly Parton and paid tribute to her in a collection years earlier: Jeremy Scott.
Dolly Parton and Jeremy Scott
Over ten years ago, for the FW16 show of his eponymous brand, Jeremy Scott created a collection clearly inspired by Dolly Parton's style. He professed to be an ardent fan of hers and had declared her one of his definitive style icons. «It's a little bit more Dolly Parton, but Dolly on molly,» the designer told W Mag at the time. Another collection with a western flavour by Jeremy Scott had already appeared at New York Fashion Week in 2011.
Also in 2016, Scott dressed Katy Perry for that year's Academy of Country Music Awards, the edition in which Perry duetted on stage with Dolly Parton herself. Scott did not design Parton's outfit for the evening — she wore a rhinestone blazer in a diamond pattern of coloured stones referencing her celebrated song Coat of Many Colors. By coincidence, Scott arrived on the red carpet wearing a leather biker jacket with a very similar embellishment, in homage to the same song. After the duet, the two met for the first time backstage.
An amusing episode that Scott recounted to The Cut was when Katy Perry threw a western-themed birthday party and invited, along with the designer, a Dolly Parton impersonator whom Scott initially believed to be the real singer — he took photos with her and said he had even posted them on his own social media. And looking at the commemorative post Scott published yesterday on his social channels, one can see that the designer also had occasion to gift the singer a pair of pink rubber cowboy boots and a Moschino handbag on another occasion. A true case, as Dolly Parton herself once sang, of «I will always love you».
