WrapStyle remembers Dolly Parton’s brilliant uniform of excess. Plus, welcome to the opening acts of the U.S. Open of Fashion, where Aryna Sabalenka served up $400,000 of diamonds during a practice session. And just in time, L.A. brand L’Agence launches a tennis capsule collection with an on-court dinner, and Hollywood-loved jeweler Jessica McCormack opens her first West Coast boutique.
Remembering Dolly Parton’s Singular Style
You could recognize Dolly Parton by her silhouette from the last row of a concert venue — buxom, big-haired, tiny-bodied and teetering on heels. And that was by design.
Like Elvis, Marilyn Monroe and Michael Jackson, she wasn’t owned by any brand; she was the brand: a self-aware blonde bimbo who, of course, was anything but.
Parton understood the power of image and built hers out of the visual vocabulary of working-class Southern femininity, with bleached hair, acrylic nails, rhinestones, fringe, tight waists, short skirts and décolletage. Then she turned it way up. The oft-told origin story is that her childhood ideal of glamour was “the town tramp,” a woman other people may have regarded as cheap but the young Parton saw as beautiful.
That tension was essential to her style, which she often called “backwoods Barbie.” Parton was always in on the joke, and her famous quip that “it costs a lot of money to look this cheap” perfectly captured just how much calculation was behind the artifice. Her clothes exaggerated things women historically have been encouraged to minimize, including breasts, blonde ambition, sexuality, sparkle and age-defying vanity. Rather than apologize for any of it, she made excess her uniform.
Fashion, in the conventional sense, wasn’t the point, though she did make a memorable appearance at the 1994 Calvin Klein fall runway show. Yes, really. Dolly in Calvin. Still, she rarely appeared in fashion magazines, becoming a style icon on her own, outside of the industry.
Her longtime costume designers Lucy Adams and Steve Summers did not work on reinventing her look, which is the name of the game for so many of today’s pop stars. They refined it, creating ever more sparkly Nudie-inspired jumpsuits and second-skin waist-snatching gowns with Western fringe and butterfly motifs. Her nails were also a style signature. Long and red, she famously used them as percussion on her hit song “9 to 5.”
Dolly’s appeal outgrew the confines of country music, and yet she stayed true to her image. She became a denim icon, a camp icon and a gay icon, embraced for her self-invention, showiness, humor, kindness and refusal to conform to conventional ideas of good taste. She didn’t dress to be taken seriously, she dressed so no one could ever mistake her for anyone else.
Along the way, she meant so much to so many people, including Taylor Swift, Miley Cyrus and Sabrina Carpenter, who sometimes imitated her style. “Oh Dolly, the only thing I could say after we met was ‘she really is an angel walking the earth,’ and ‘we look like we could be sisters,’” Carpenter wrote on Instagram.
The social media tributes have been fascinating to see, from Jeff Bezos (“Dolly spent her whole life showing us what it means to lead with love …”) to the Royal Family (“Remembering the late, great Dolly, who brought joy, comfort and inspiration to so many — including the millions of children given free books through her Imagination Library”).
Carol Burnett recalled taping the 1979 TV special “Dolly and Carol in Nashville” over Thanksgiving week, when Parton cooked individual turkey dinners for every person involved in the production, while Reese Witherspoon posted about how Parton took her out to dinner to share her memories of June Carter Cash when she was prepping for the 2005 film “Walk the Line.”
The fashion community has also chimed in, with L.A. designers Emily Current and Meritt Elliott of The Great calling her their “denim queen,” and Emma Grede, co-founder of Good American, remembering their 2025 collaboration on a denim capsule collection and the joy of shooting with Parton.
“After a crazy long day on set, Dolly took photos with every single person working. Never have I see anyone do that and never have I been on a set where everyone wanted a photo,” said Grede. “But Dolly was different.”
And she looked different, always. As Parton said herself, “Who wants to dress classy? I’m in a class of my own.” Amen.
U.S. Open of Fashion Brings Stars and Sparkle to Queens
Welcome to the opening acts of what can only be described as the U.S. Open of Fashion.
While the official Grand Slam action begins Sunday, Flushing Meadows is already a runway for looks on the court and in the seats.
Tuesday’s Roger Federer exhibition event at Arthur Ashe Stadium set the tone, with U.S. Open and Federer superfan Anna Wintour attending alongside designers Tory Burch and Wes Gordon, beauty scion Aerin Lauder, “The Shards” stars Kaia Gerber and Homer Gere, Lin-Manuel Miranda and more.
On the court, the tournament promises to deliver a masterclass in style from icon Venus Williams, whose avant-garde looks changed the game; Naomi Osaka, who has turned the court walk into something akin to a Met Gala red carpet; Coco Gauff, the face of New Balance x Miu Miu; and Aryana Sabalenka, who locked in a powerhouse partnership with Gucci earlier this year.
Sabalenka got ahead of the action on Tuesday, turning heads during a mixed doubles match alongside Novak Djokovic, when she sported a daring Nike New York Court Slam black mesh tennis dress over an electric orange sports top and bottom. She completed the look with over 83 carats of colorful diamond jewelry created in collaboration with New York brand Material Good, which she will be wearing throughout the tournament.
While Jannik Sinner has given new meaning to tennis-core as an ambassador for Gucci, debuting a series of custom luxury duffels on the court, he had to withdraw from the competition because of a knee injury. But there are other luxury brand ambassadors worth keeping score of, including Carlos Alcatraz (Louis Vuitton) and Lorenzo Musetti (Bottega Veneta).
L’Agence Gets Into the Game
Who knew that while scaling a wildly successful L.A. fashion business over the past 12 years, Tara Rudes Dann was also perfecting her tennis game? Which is to say, the L’Agence fashion director launched the brand’s new tennis collection last week from an authentic place, as a lifelong lover of the sport.
She gathered friends courtside at the Beverly Hills estate of her uncle, L’Agence creative director and chairman Jeff Rudes, to celebrate over a delightful tennis-themed dinner that included honeydew Deuce cocktails, a L’Agence branded Roe caviar service and optic yellow, tennis-ball shaped “Gateau Princesse” desserts.
Naturally, the dress code was tennis whites, and she enlisted her fashionable guests, including makeup artist Monika Blunder, stylists Abby Arad and Andrea Lubin, furniture designer Nina Takesh, beauty podcaster Melissa Magsaysay, Anablue founder Lauren Perez Waltzer and others to model the collection of cute tennis dresses, pleated skirts and fitted tanks, designed to perform with four-way stretch, UV protection and moisture-wicking materials. Everyone looked great.
The evening’s guest of honor was former pro tennis player and fashion maverick Anne White, who famously created a frenzy by sporting a unitard while playing at Wimbledon in 1985, where a referee actually told her to wear more appropriate clothing. Apparently, she had no idea the look would stoke so much controversy.
“I’m sitting next to an incredible human,” Dann said during her toast. “A badass tennis player.”
After her professional career, White spent 16 years in fashion as director of wholesale at Cartier and Jaeger-LeCoultre watches, before becoming director of The Beverly Hills Tennis Club.
Cut to the pandemic, when Dann met and got the chance to play with White on the very court where dinner was served and the collection was launched, alas without a unitard.
“It was so special during that time of so much uncertainty to be with someone so powerful,” said Dann, who is getting ready to up her game in another way next month, showing L’Agence for the first time at Paris Fashion Week. Bonne chance.
L’Agence Tennis Collection, $135 to $450, at L’Agence.com, L’Agence stores and select retail partners.
Hollywood-Loved Jeweler Puts Down West Coast Roots
It may be the dog days of summer, but that hasn’t slowed the fashion action.
Hollywood-loved jeweler Jessica McCormack, who designed Zendaya’s engagement ring and Zoë Kravitz’s everyday diamond earrings and ring stacks, has opened her first West Coast store at South Coast Plaza.
The antiques-filled boutique has brought the British designer’s residential retail sensibility to Costa Mesa, Calif., in a remarkable way, so that you can hardly tell it’s inside a shopping center. And the opening adds to an impressive list of recent first-to-market store exclusives for South Coast Plaza that also includes Manolo Blahnik, Schiaparelli and Alaia.
The 1,600 square-foot space showcases McCormack’s signature Day Diamonds, as well as exclusive pieces and new collections.
“Wearability has always been at the heart of how I design, with pieces meant to be worn every day, not saved for occasions,” McCormack said. “California already knows how to do that instinctively; there’s an effortless quality to how people dress here that I’ve always admired, and it’s exactly the world I want Day Diamonds to live in.”
In the corporate-dominated landscape of high jewelry, where heritage brands have centuries of archives to draw on, and aggressively pay for celebrity placements, McCormack has built a modern, independent empire.
The New Zealand-born designer may be a pioneer in the concept of casual diamonds, but she is just as serious as the big guys are about her craft, nurtured during a childhood spent combing through estate auctions with her art-dealer father.
A formative internship in the jewelry department at Sotheby’s London deepened her obsession, giving her hands-on experience with 1920s Cartier and imperial Russian treasures. But rather than copying the past, McCormack has translated the tradition of Georgian and Victorian gold smithing into sleek, ultra-modern pieces. Her signature “button-back” technique cases the reverse side of a diamond in gold to soften the light, while hand-cut, blackened white gold borders give classical settings a rock n’ roll edge.
This balance of high-end luxe and effortless wearability has captured the attention of Hollywood tastemakers who are wearing her jewelry on the red carpet and on the street.
When Kravitz, who is the ultimate arbiter of effortless, downtown cool, signed on as the first brand ambassador in 2024, it cemented the brand’s position at the intersection of high fashion and street style.
Following a successful American debut with a townhouse on New York’s Madison Avenue, McCormack is doubling down on Southern California with a standalone Rodeo Drive flagship planned by 2027. So expect lots more Hollywood hits to keep coming.
Jessica McCormack, 3333 Bristol Street, Costa Mesa, Calif.
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