Steve Summers reveals how he crafts hundreds of custom looks yearly for a star who ignores trends and sticks to what works.
Dolly Parton built her reputation as a musical legend and philanthropist over decades, but her distinctive personal style earned her equal recognition as a fashion icon. Much of that visual identity stems from her three-decade collaboration with Steve Summers, who has served as her stylist and creative director since the early 1990s.
Summers approaches his work with Parton as a multifaceted challenge. "Designing for Dolly is great, because there are so many [Dollys]," he told Vogue in 2023. "I've got the philanthropist, the singer, the actress, the theme park owner. The canvas is always very broad."
The stylist's favorite creation among Parton's recent appearances was the mirrorball outfit she wore to open the 2022 ACM Awards. Every garment Parton wears undergoes transformation through customization. "Even if she wears a dress that's off the rack, it doesn't look like it by the time she gets it on," Summers explained. "There's a customization that happens no matter what she's wearing."
That hands-on approach translates to staggering output. Summers and Parton's costuming team produce roughly 300 custom outfits annually. "There is an outfit in production every single day," he said. "If she's doing personal appearances, 10 outfits in a day is not unusual."
A Formula That Ignores Trends
Three decades of collaboration have refined their process. "She's been very specific throughout her entire career. She wears what she likes, and what she feels comfortable in," Summers noted. "The great thing about working with Dolly is she doesn't follow fashion trends at all; Her style hasn't changed that much over the years."
The approach relies on consistent elements: cinched waists, monochromatic palettes, and hourglass silhouettes in dresses or jumpsuits. "She's a very petite woman, so it's easy to overwhelm her—it's easy for the clothes to wear her, and I don't like that," Summers said. He described the results as "relatively simple" in construction yet "very intricate in detail."
No Parton look is complete without her signature 140-mm stilettos, which are also custom-made. "The pitch on the shoe is very high, so we have the lasts custom-made for comfort," Summers explained. The team designs footwear in-house through relationships with a manufacturer friend and a Nashville-based craftsman. At 80, Parton continued wearing the towering heels.
The entire archive lives in a warehouse, with every garment photographed and catalogued by color, genre, and style since 1964. Yet Summers and Parton rarely revisit past looks. "We're not trying to [re-invent] the wheel—we're just trying to keep it rolling," he said.