From the time she signed her first recording contract with Monument Records in 1965, she was inventing not only her sound but her public self: a cartoon bimbo in a giant platinum wig, six-inch heels, a push-up bra and rhinestones whom she later christened (in song) a “Backwoods Barbie.”

That signature style never wavered. At the time of her death, Parton reportedly had more than 350 wigs (one for almost every day of the year), more than 2,000 pairs of shoes and a 50,000-square-foot archive of bedazzled stage outfits. In fact, she had so many outfits she wrote an entire book about them. That book, “Behind the Seams: My Life in Rhinestones,” was a sort of autobiography in clothes to go with “Dolly Parton, Songteller: My Life in Lyrics,” her autobiography in song. For her, they were two sides of the same story.

And she had inspired not only her fans, who attended Dolly look-alike conventions — Rhinestone Fest and Dolly Day — in full Dolly gear, but also artists like Miley Cyrus, Kacey Musgraves and Carrie Underwood, all of whom went through their own rhinestone cowgirl phases. Not to mention Emma Grede and Khloé Kardashian of Good American, who collaborated with Parton on a Joleans denim and apparel collection (a quintessentially Dolly pun).

As the lyrics went on her debut album, “This dumb blonde ain’t nobody’s fool.”

Now that kind of singular image-making seems like a standard approach for artists of any gender, but Parton did it before the age of stylists and brand deals. And she often did it in the face of active criticism: from her shocked preacher grandfather, when she was a child; from the parents of her school friends, who thought she was “a bad influence,” as she wrote in her book; and from the executives of her record label, who thought she wouldn’t be taken seriously because, she later paraphrased, they said “you look more like a hooker than you do a singer.”

What they didn’t know is that she understood exactly what she was doing: tapping into clichés rooted deep in the cultural hive mind while confronting them at the same time. She wasn’t just going to outwork and out-sing everyone, she was going to out-sparkle them, too, subverting the very expectations she was creating.