Why this British photographer has spent a decade dressing up as Dolly Parton

By Jacqui Palumbo, CNN

(CNN) — Alice Hawkins has never photographed her idol, Dolly Parton, but she has photographed many Dollys.

One Dolly is on horseback, red heels in stirrups and blonde curls piled high on her head. In another image, two Dollys link their arms around each other’s waists, fingers fanning out with long acrylic nails. Elsewhere, another Dolly — Hawkins herself — dons a crisp white skirt suit to pose outside of the small chapel in Dollywood, the Pigeon Forge, Tennessee-amusement park owned by the Queen of Nashville herself.

Hawkins is a British photographer, born more than 4,300 miles from Memphis, where Parton broke into the music industry. But she’s spent the past decade-plus dressing up as the singer, making multiple series about her own sense of self — and that of other Dolly superfans — through the glittering facet of Parton’s image.

Emulating Parton’s flamboyant style has given Hawkins “a lot of self-belief,” she said in a phone call with CNN, teaching her to “embrace” her femininity and sexuality in a way she hadn’t always felt comfortable with.

Hawkins has long loved the extravagance of Parton’s Americana, and was already a fan of her music when she first saw the country star perform in 2002 at a small venue in London. But there, she found herself “spellbound,” she explained. “I left knowing that I’d found my idol.”

“I’m a country girl myself, from Suffolk,” Hawkins said of the kinship she feels with Parton, despite their geographical and generational distance. “I grew up in a village, didn’t have much money. And I moved to London, my own ‘cup of ambition,’” she explained, quoting the lyric from Parton’s classic 1980 song “9 to 5.” Today, she lives just outside of the city, raising her children while working as a photographer.

Earlier this year, she released “Dear Dolly,” a book that presents several Parton-inspired photo projects, from sumptuous, staged portraits of Dolly impersonators to stripped-down nude self-portraits of Hawkins’ own pregnancy, in which she channels the singer through voluminous hair.

Defiant glamour

Through Hawkins’ lens, being unapologetically feminine can be an act of defiance against gendered stereotypes.

In the intro of “Dear Dolly,” Hawkins writes on some of the moments that have undercut her self-worth: a relative describing her “like a tart in season,” when she dressed for a night out as a teenager; a headmaster questioning her intelligence before an important exam. “(There’s) lots of negative judgments and assumptions, on your intelligence on your ability,” she told CNN. Women like Pamela Anderson and Anna Nicole Smith, whom she also idolized in her younger years, “stuck two fingers up” with their platinum hair and comfort with their sexuality, she wrote.

In the blush-hued, bedazzled world of “Dear Dolly,” Hawkins and the other Dollys — Kelly O’Brien, Trixie Malicious and Claire Moore — radiate a sense of joy, freedom and self-assuredness. It’s both a love letter to the country superstar and the sisterhoods formed in her name. For Hawkins, the work has also been an outlet she could turn to in difficult times.

“I’ve made the work when I felt quite desperate or full of grief, or terrified about my future and my identity,” she said.

Hawkins first visited Dollywood in 2010 at the suggestion of her husband while traveling to the US, following the unexpected death and funeral of her closest friend. She was deeply depressed, she said, but found solace in her experience at the park, located near the small cabin where Parton was raised in the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains. “It was healing,” Hawkins recalled.

The following year, after one of her editors at the early 2010s British fashion magazine Ponystep unsuccessfully pitched a shoot with Parton, Hawkins instead suggested an editorial where she could “walk in her footsteps” in Dollywood, prompting the first project where she began to dress like the country star.

But Hawkins doesn’t consider herself an impersonator, and she doesn’t “go fully Dolly” on a day-to-day basis, she said. “It’s not really me, it’s my work. Sometimes I have acrylic nails, but I’m not that hyper-glamorous. That’s just my fantasy.”

One of her collaborators, O’Brien, meanwhile, is a Parton impersonator — and a convincing one, at that.

“I’ll never forget that we were in her pub in her little village in the English countryside. She was Dolly down to a tee, sitting at the bar, having a drink while I was shooting,” Hawkins recalled. “And this customer came in, and he was completely convinced she was Dolly Parton. We just could not burst his bubble.”

“She stayed in character, and she was like, ‘Well, thank you, honey,’” she continued. “I hope nobody told him otherwise.”

Photographing “Dear Dolly” has changed Hawkins life in many ways, she said. She “found a sense of belonging” through the friendships she’s made through a shared love for Parton. She has memories of things she never would have thought she’d do, like stepping on stage in Nashville to karaoke “In My Coat of Many Colors,” which “was terrifying,” she said with a laugh. “I can’t actually sing but I went for it and (the audience) were very kind to me.”

Hawkins has met Parton, too, several times at her shows, and she hopes she’s seen the book.

“She has taught me that I can be blonde, sexy, and almighty at the same time — and respected,” Hawkins said.

She knows she can always turn to Parton when needed, and step into a pair of rhinestone high heels. “I’m lucky that I’ve got that — her music will be forever.”

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