Dolly Parton Talks Her Iconic Wigs and Reveals Which Hairstyle Her Husband Doesn’t Like (Exclusive)

Dolly Parton is opening up about her iconic style. In an interview with ET’s Rachel Smith, the 77-year-old singer, who’s promoting her new book, Behind the Seams: My Life in Rhinestones, reveals she has hundreds of wigs, and says her husband, Carl Thomas Dean, isn’t a fan of all of them.

Parton tells ET that her wigs are “all big and they’re all sexy,” but notes, “When I wear my hair too stationary, I said, ‘You don’t like my hair?’ And he said, ‘Well, it looks too important.’ There’s a certain look that looks important.”

As for the specific number of wigs she has, Parton says, “Once somebody asked me, ‘How many wigs do you have?’ I said, ‘Well, I must have at least 365, because I wear one almost every day.'”

Parton doesn’t wear her wigs all the time, though, so she makes sure to keep her own hair dyed and styled for when she’s rocking her own locks.

“I keep my own hair about the same length, and I keep it bleached, and my roots done up,” she says. “When I’m around home or whatever, when I’m comfortable, but I still pull my hair up. I still like it to look [nice].”

Parton’s wigs are just one part of her famous look, something she first started developing as a child based on “the town tramp.”

“The men did pay attention to her. She could have got a reputation she didn’t deserve… but they called her trash,” Parton says. “When I was little I thought, ‘That’s what I want to be when I grow up.'”

Mae West and Marilyn Monroe also served as style inspirations for Parton, who says, “I wanted anything colorful, anything sparkly. I just wanted to shine.”

“I started out in business when I was 10 years old… and so my aunts, my mom, different people would make things for me,” she says. “… But then as my career started going on more and more, I felt like if you’re a star, you gotta shine. It just kind of kept going and going into where I just couldn’t get enough sparkle in my life. Still can’t.”

Parton’s style was never about her public image, but rather “about what made me feel good,” she says.

“[It was about] how I felt like I wanted to look and how I thought I looked my best. I just wanted to be more flamboyant. I just wanted to dress according to how I felt,” she says. “… It was more important that I be comfortable inside of myself… I just felt better in me to look that way. It just gave me a little extra confidence.”

Fans will get insight into all that and more when Behind the Seams: My Life in Rhinestones, which is complete with 450 fashion photos, hits shelves. As for the most important item featured in her book and in her closet, Parton tells ET, “Shoes. I gotta wear my high heels, so I can reach my wig cabinet.”

Behind the Seams: My Life in Rhinestones is out Oct. 17.

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