Of all the aphorisms uttered by Dolly Parton, the “glittery country goddess from Tennessee,” as Andy Warhol called her, who died on Tuesday in Nashville, perhaps the most telling was a line she uttered as part of a David Letterman Top 10 list of pet peeves in 1995. One of the things that most irritated her was “Accountants who don’t understand how much it costs to make me look this cheap.”

In fact, no one understood what it took to look like Dolly Parton better than Dolly Parton. She may have been only five feet tall, but she made herself larger than life. 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, and rhinestones whom she later christened a “Backwoods Barbie.”

At the time of her death, Parton reportedly had more than 350 wigs, more than 2,000 pairs of shoes, and a 50,000-square-foot archive of bedazzled stage outfits. She wrote a book, “Behind the Seams: My Life in Rhinestones,” and inspired artists like Miley Cyrus, Kacey Musgraves, and Carrie Underwood, plus a collaboration with Emma Grede and Khloé Kardashian of Good American.

She did it in the face of criticism from her preacher grandfather and record label executives who thought she looked like a hooker. She understood she was subverting expectations. “Never leave a rhinestone unturned,” she told Warhol in 2014.