Dolly Parton knows style when she sees it.
The country music queen revealed how she found her famously flashy sense of fashion in a new interview with The Guardian, crediting the “town tramp” as her muse.
“She was flamboyant. She had bright red lipstick, long red fingernails,” Parton, 77, said about the woman, who she would watch out for while going to town. “She had high-heeled shoes, little floating plastic goldfish in the heels of them, short skirts, low-cut tops, and I just thought she was beautiful.”
The “Wildflowers” singer didn’t let others’ opinions of the foxy fashionista wilt her admiration for her, either.
“When people would say, ‘She ain’t nothing but trash,’ I would always say, ‘Well, that’s what I’m gonna be when I grow up,’” she told The Guardian.
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Parton said she was even willing to face abuse to wear what she wanted.
“I was willing to pay for it,” the “Coat of Many Colors” singer said. According to The Guardian, Parton’s father and grandfather hated how she dressed, and the latter would physically punish her for it.
“I’m very sensitive, I didn’t like being disciplined – it hurt my feelings so bad to be scolded or whipped or whatever. But sometimes there’s just that part of you that’s willing, if you want something bad enough, to go for it.”
“I’ve always been true to myself,” she added. “That was what my mama always used to say: To thine own self be true.”
Parton, who iconically once said, “It costs a lot of money to look this cheap,” is set to release her 49th album, titled “Rockstar,” on Nov. 17.