It isn’t often that you get to see a collection of a famous star’s costumes up close and personal. But at this year’s national conference in Nashville we had the privilege of displaying nine of Dolly Parton’s costumes at our Welcome Reception. (It would have been ten costumes but I’ll get to that story.) We worked with some of the ladies who used to sew for Dolly, in particular Lynn Lesher, to secure the display. In addition, one of our own members, Alania Sheeley, who also lives in Nashville, used to sew for Dolly and was a huge help in setting up the display. Big kudos also go out to Rachel Kurland who brought three dress forms from home that were small enough to accommodate Dolly’s figure.

It was quite a challenge to get all of those dress forms to fit Dolly’s costumes! We had to stuff, prod, and poke those mannequins until we got them just right. The reason we couldn’t show the tenth costume was that we simply didn’t have a dress form small enough to handle the 23” waistline. Most of the costumes had about a 24” waist so we squeezed the garments onto the forms and didn’t zip some of them all the way, but that last one was just not going on any form we had.

We would have advertised the display earlier so that all of our members knew about the event, but we didn’t fully secure the costumes until the week before conference. Lynn Lesher corralled three other people from Dolly’s staff and from Textile Fabrics to help collect and transport the costumes to conference.

We learned a few things from those who worked/work for Dolly while dressing the mannequins: Dolly only wears each costume once. And she may change 4 – 5 times a day when she’s on the road. Dolly then donates her costumes and they are auctioned off in order to raise money for her foundations, one being to buy books for children under 5 years old. 655,000 children received books from Dolly’s Imagination Library in 2012 alone. Since its inception the program has distributed 45 million books. The costumes we were lent for exhibition covered a range of styles. Whether leather, tweed, or feathers, Dolly always pays attention to style and works closely with her designers.

It was a huge bonus to be able to view Dolly’s costumes and to have Lynn and Alania there to talk about their past experiences sewing for Dolly. Dolly’s home is in Nashville, so it was only “fitting” that we have her costumes on display there!

Written by Debbie Bone-Harris, VP of Membership