Dolly Parton has made no secret of the fact that she fashioned her now-iconic look after the town tramp, when she was growing up in the mountains of East Tennessee. But in a resurfaced interview, Parton revals the lengths she went to, in order to achieve the desired look, without the ability to go purchase cosmetics.
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"I really wanted to wear lipstick," Parton shares on Blank on Blank. "Daddy didn't want us to wear lipstick. We didn't have money to buy makeup anyway, but we used to have this medicine, called Mercurochrome, and that's what I'd paint my lips with, even as a little kid. I always wanted to wear makeup. I'd paint my lips, and there wasn't nothing Daddy could do. He couldn't rub that off. It stains your lips."
Parton might have gotten away with it, but she makes it clear her father, who passed away in 2000, was not a fan.
"He'd say, 'Come here. Get that lipstick off,'" Parton recalls. "I'd say, 'It won't come off. That's my natural color, Daddy."
That isn't the only creative way Parton found to look made up. She also reveals she used burned matches to paint her eyebrows as well.
Dolly Parton's Fashion Inspiration
Parton has been very open that her biggest fashion inspiration came from someone most people looked down on. In an interview on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, Parton opens up about how she got her signature look.
"When I was little, I patterned my look after the town trollop, in our town," Parton remembers. "I guess that's what you call them. I thought she was the most beautiful thing. She had all this makeup and hair, and the tight clothes, and everything I wanted. It impressed me."
Parton also makes a cameo as The Painted Lady in the NBC movie, Coat of Many Colors, patterned after the woman she admired.
The Country Music Hall of Fame member was a fan of the woman, even though they never became friends.
"I never really got to know her personally. I don't think her family knew she was a ho," Parton says with a laugh.
