Looking Back at Some of Dolly Parton’s Greatest Costumes

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Dolly Parton

While Dolly Parton has thousands of fans dressing up as their idol in their best recreations of her famous blonde bombshell look every Halloween, Dolly herself loved to transform as well.

The music icon attended a Halloween party around 1976 where she posed alongside Dom DeLuise, Mel Brooks, and Anne Bancroft. According to the fan who reposted the snap decades later, the party was hosted by Mel and Anne, who were married from 1964 until Anne’s death in 2005.

It’s not immediately clear who Dolly is dressed as, but she is nearly unrecognizable with her hair hidden by a white head covering and wearing garish Halloween makeup instead of her usual elegant look.

Much more recently, Dolly dressed as the character Veruca Salt from “Willy Wonka,” complete with a goose and cart full of giant golden eggs. A shot of her look was shared to her Instagram page with the caption, “Happy Halloween from Veruca Salt!”

In 2024, Dolly celebrated the holiday by sharing a photo of her and Rachel, her youngest sister, dressed festively while making treats in the kitchen to promote the Halloween section of their 2024 book “Good Lookin’ Cookin’: A Year of Meals.” Rachel wore a yellow-accented cat costume while Dolly sported a black witches’ hat.

The Playboy Moment

Dolly has been transforming with all sorts of costumes under many different circumstances. In 1978, she covered Playboy in classic Bunny attire, complete with sequined pink wrist cuffs and a small riding crop to accessorize.

43 years later, the “Wildflowers” singer recreated the sexy look for her husband Carl Dean’s 79th birthday.

Dolly’s Most Unrecognizable Transormation

Perhaps Dolly’s most drastic disguise was a costume she wore for a 1987 comedy sketch that made her truly unrecognizable. For the skit, which was a part of her ABC variety show “Dolly,” the superstar wore braces and a brunette wig to portray an awkward teenaged superfan of rock’n’roll icon Little Richard.

Dolly Glitters as an ‘Unlikely Angel’

Dolly transformed into an angel for the cover art and a scene from her 1996 Christmas film “Unlikely Angel.” In it, she plays a country singer who dies in a freak car accident while trying to swerve from a deer and gets turned away from heaven due to living a life of selfishness, the complete opposite of Dolly’s true nature.

Costume designer Jodie Tilden created the look. The movie was produced in part by Sandollar Productions, the company Dolly started with her former manager Sandy Gallin in 1985. Their biggest successes, which many people don’t realize the company was behind, were the “Father of the Bride” films and “Buffy the Vampire Slayer.”

Gallin was Dolly’s longtime manager from the mid ’70s until 1998, when he retired from personal management and put his focus into a luxury real estate career. From 2005 until her death in 2026, Dolly was managed by Danny Nozell, who became embroiled in controversy after firing her trusted nephew Bryan Seaver as Dolly’s head of security in September and ordering his employees to vacate her properties they’d been guarding so they could be replaced.

Bryan alleged in court filings that Dolly had been “intimidated” regarding business dealings prior to her death, and public opinion regarding who is at fault in the dispute remains divided.