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How to Zing Up Your Holiday Wardrobe
Be like Dolly — and sparkle!
Elena Lacey (Getty Images, 12)
“Be jolly and sparkle like Dolly” — that’s my holiday motto this year.
Go all the way: sequins, rhinestones, fringe, sky-high hair with battery-powered lights weaved through. Pile it on. This is not the year for that little black dress.
This is the year to be too much — and revel in your glorious, notorious, look-at-me muchness.
It’s the Dolly Parton way.
That 5-foot-tall giant of joy, who passed away Aug. 25 at 80, believed more is more.
More singing, more sparkle, more sharing, more love, more compassion, more Christmas.
Christmas was Dolly’s favorite holiday. She often said, “I look like a drag queen’s Christmas tree” every day of the year, but on this day, she’d outshine herself. She’d decorate an elevator in her home to look like a chimney and dress up like “Granny Claus” to bring down a bag of gifts.
“I have Christmas lights in my hair — I have them everywhere. I wear earrings that light up, a reindeer necklace that lights up, I wear sweaters with Christmas lights on — you push a button and I light up!” she told Good Housekeeping UK in 2024.
Dolly often said it “costs a lot of money to look this cheap” — but with these tips for adding joy to your Dolly-days dazzle, it’s cheap to look cheap…and still twinkle like a star.
Good gaud: Dolly wore sweatpants around her house, she told Absolute Radio’s Dave Berry in 2023, but she never showed up in public looking frumpy. Image matters, and gaud is good. At the holidays, put as much care into wrapping yourself as you do in wrapping the gifts under the tree.
“If you’re gonna be a star, you gotta look like one,” she told Berry.
Buy 100 yards of sequins at a craft store for $15 and wrap that string of sparkle around your neck, wrists and waist. Dolly often wore belts of dangling chains that draped from her waist and swayed when she walked. She also wore sequined fringe at her shoulders. Recreate the look with glittering fringe trim for around $10 per yard at craft stores.
“I have to shine,” she told the BBC in 2019. “I don’t want to look like everybody else.”
Good sheer: Dolly’s longtime stylist Steven Summers often dressed the star in tight dresses made with sheer fabrics dotted with rhinestones and sequins. Body-hugging ruching made them distinctive — and he often made the sleeves long, so the sheer, sparkly fabric would flow over the top of her hands.
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If you search for “sheer top with sparkle,” you can find many tops with this delicate sleeve technique for less than $25, and this is a trick everybody can wear.
I often wear sheer tops underneath flowing slip dresses, to cover my arms. Many petite songstresses like Dolly and Stevie Nicks wear bat-wing tops in sheer fabrics to help them “take up space” on stage and in life.
Glad tie-dings: Dolly’s neck gear was strategic — sometimes high collars, sometimes diamond cross necklaces, always placed to keep the eye on her cleavage.
“Nothing is accidental,” Summers said in a 2023 television interview. He would create up to 15 outfits for one opening weekend at Dollywood, Dolly’s theme park in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, and around 360 custom-made costumes a year. With each one, he’d have to consider: is she sitting or standing? What’s the message she’s sending?
This is true of your holiday outfits, too. My favorite holiday accessory is both festive and practical. It’s a $28 skinny chiffon tie from Free People — just a narrow piece of sheer material with tiny sparkles that folds up to the size of a quarter. I take it on every trip, because it provides maximum impact for minimum weight. I don’t like to haul around heavy necklaces, and my 70-year-old neck appreciates lightweight coverage.
I also have a skinny scarf made of gold sequins that I bought on sale for $50 at AllSaints.
A search for “sequin skinny scarf” will turn up many other options, from Etsy to Urban Outfitters, at prices as low as $15.
Yule tulle: If you want to jazz up any full-skirted dress, put a poofy tulle skirt underneath it. My sister, Lynn, wears a red crinoline under a black wrap dress when she performs holiday concerts for nursing home residents under her stage name Adelynn Wood. Tulle skirts cost as little as $10 at Walmart and some online retailers.
Go ugly: If you want to go the gaudy Christmas sweater route, check resale shops like Goodwill. You can also get a lot of other sources — and laughs — with an online search of “Ugly Christmas Sweaters.”
My flamboyant friend Jeanne Bice, the late founder of the Quacker Factory line sold on QVC, adored Christmas. I cherish my vintage Quacker Factory holiday sweaters, and you can get one for as little as $20 if you search online resale vendors.
Shine from within: Dolly’s look was famously artificial, while her heart was famously real. No matter what you decide to wear this holiday season, let your loving spirit glow.
When Dolly turned 75 five years ago, Oprah Winfrey asked her the secret to looking and being vibrant.
“More than anything, it comes from inside,” she said. “You gotta shine from within.”
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