The 72-year old country singer is the unexpected muse of Gucci’s spring 2019 collection. Singer, actress and writer, she continues to seduce with her wild stage outfits and her awesome one-liners. Those millennial popstars have got nothing on Dolly.

She’s like a character from a John Waters movie

“.” Like the imaginary lovechild of Jayne Mansfield and Mae West, whose uncle could be called Elton John, Dolly Parton has cultivated an image of excessive and explosive femininity. Glamourous, kitsch, white trash, sexy, the blond bimbo has always bordered on the sublime, the vulgar and the ridiculous. She’s never denied her plastic surgery, claiming if people say she looks happy then it must down to the Botox. She’s stayed loyal to her country gal pin-up wardrobe that has become as famous as her songs. And it was undoubtedly this luminescent panoply that inspired Alessandro Michele for his spring 2019 collection in denim, candy pink and glitter. This legendary look was created by Dolly after seeing a prostitute in the village where she grew up. A fan of drag-queens, she confirms she once lost a Dolly Parton look-alike drag contest. Seeming to constantly play a role and willingly mock herself, the singer is a precursor to the madness of Kanye West, transforming her life into a performance. This love of staging herself reached its climax in 1986 when she bought a theme park in Tennessee that she renamed Dollywood. Her very own Hollywood, just like Elvis’s Graceland and Michael Jackson’s Neverland. Adding to the legend Dolly the sheep, the first ever cloned mammal was apparently named after the singer’s generous chest, with the cloning having taken place in Scotland using mammary gland cells. You couldn’t make it up…