Lainey Wilson’s fans can’t get enough of her Bell Bottom Country style and soon might be able to shop for the look themselves.
The Grammy Award-winning singer, 32, has said that a lot of her clothes are the result of painstakingly trawling through racks at vintage stores and not something most people can easily replicate.
But she says she and her team have “got some things up our sleeves” to solve that.
Speaking to the Standard, she said: “[I’m] very excited to share it with everybody. It has been a long time coming, but it’s right around the corner.
“I started wearing my bell bottoms and hat because it felt true to me and real to me and my story, and it’s just another way for me to be able to express myself like I do with my music. It’s fun to do.”
This was evident when she played two sold out headlining shows at the O2 Forum Kentish Town, where aside from being standing room only, the majority of the audience were dressed in bell bottoms and cowboy hats.
“Standing room only!” she repeated in disbelief. “I still can’t wrap my head around that. When I think about how far away from home I was. Guess I just never in a million years thought that a little girl who grew up in Baskin, Louisiana, in a town of 180-something people, that my story would relate to folks over there.
“When I looked out there it looked like straight-up bell bottom country; it looked like everyone had stepped out of the 70s. It was cool to see.
“I will tell you I had more of a fanbase in the UK than I did over here [in the US] in the beginning. It’s like y’all caught on a lot quicker and a lot sooner than folks did over here and it’s very important for me to never forget that.”
The Hang Tight Honey hitmaker reflected on her career so far, including earning extra money as a Hannah Montana tribute artist, in the Disney Plus documentary Lainey Wilson: Bell Bottom Country.
She said of the experience: “It was awesome for a lot of reasons but I will tell you being able to kind of zoom out and see how far we’ve come in a year and a half because they filmed it over a long span, it was important for me.
“You get caught up in the day to day and just go, go, go to where it’s sometimes you’re like man, it’s kind of hard to tell where you started and where you ended up and where you’re going.
“It was very nice for me to be able take that time and even to hear what my parents had to say, take a good look at the journey because that’s what it’s been a journey.”
And it’s not over yet. Her new album Whirlwind has just been released and she says the title perfectly sums up her life right now.
“That’s the word that I keep using and hearing to describe the past two years since Bell Bottom Country, so it kind of only felt natural to name the record yet.
“It has been chaotic but in the best kind of way, it has come with lots of ups and downs but I think writing this record and recording it and getting to do it with my band in the studio it brought me a lot of peace and it kind of made me feel at home there in a time of my life where I was nowhere near home.
“It was a little bit of pressure, but I do good under pressure. I enjoyed the process, it was a challenge.”
Her “dear friend” Miranda Lambert features on a track called Good Horses.
“She’s just one of those ladies in country music that checks in on me and will text me here and there and be like ‘I’m thinking about you, where you at? How’s your head? How’s your heart?’ Wilson gushed.
“It’s important to have those kinds of people like that surrounding you in the industry because it can be a doozy.”
Another person within the industry who has shown a lot of support for her is Dolly Parton.
The Watermelon Moonshine singer’s face lights up at the mention of her.
She said: “Dolly Parton is my hero, she can do no wrong. She is everything that she says she is and just getting to spend a little bit of time with her, she has taught me so much even when it comes to navigating the industry.
“You can tell that she’s passionate about everything that she has got her hand in. I definitely would like to be able to say the same thing.”
