Yesterday John Galliano bowed out of the Met Costume Institute’s 2027 “John Galliano: Horizons” theme as the museum faced intense backlash to its decision to bestow such a high honor on a fashion designer with a history of antisemitic and racist outbursts. (In 2011, Galliano was found guilty in France of “public insults” based on origin, religion, race or ethnicity.)

May Allure suggest an alternative? It’s someone who was never caught on a camera or a hot mic saying anything remotely negative or judgmental about another person or group. Someone who chose, again and again, to use the financial fruits of her incredible talent to give back. And someone whose motivation in her fashion and beauty choices was to create a character, to have fun, and to spread joy. And a spectacle of unabashed, unpretentious joy sounds pretty good right about now doesn’t it?

Last week, Valerie Monroe wrote a story for Allure about Dolly’s great natural beauty. Yes, she wore heavy makeup and towering wigs and embraced plastic surgery, but her authenticity was undeniable. Her physical transformation, wrote Monroe, “was playful, creative, an exercise in extravagance, a loving tribute to the ‘trashy’ character she wanted to be.” Dolly often told the story of encountering her style icon as a little girl—she happened to be “the town tramp.” And Dolly never wavered in her commitment to that image.

Feathers, fringes, plunging necklines, skin-tight fabrics, generous handfuls of rhinestones, Dolly Parton had no use for “quiet luxury” and rejected everything “clean girl beauty” stands for. She went big, always, and liked to remind us that she never cut costs: “It takes a lot of money to look this cheap.” But don’t forget the first dazzling adornment of Dolly Parton’s life: her “Coat of Many Colors,” sewed from rags by her mother with deep love and worn with great pride. (Vanessa Friedman wrote in the New York Times last week that American Songwriter named the coat of many colors one of the three most famous pieces of clothing in song. The others? Prince’s raspberry beret and Elvis’s blue suede shoes.) Dolly understood the memory and emotion that can be imbued in even the most humble pieces of clothing.