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Lainey Wilson Explains the Origin of Her Bell Bottom Style: ‘Obsessed’ Because They ‘Tell a Story’
Country superstar Lainey Wilson is known for her signature bell bottom look, as she’s never photographed wearing any other type of pant. The “God Bless Texas” singer reveled how the style became her trademark in the new Hulu documentary, Lainey Wilson: Bell Bottom Country.
“I feel like a lot of my outfits, I can mix and match. I definitely am not one of those people that like I can’t wear – like I wear something way more than once or twice. I do a lot of vintage shopping,” Lainey, 32, said about her thrifty fashion choices.
“And when I moved to Nashville and I realized pretty dang quick that being a singer-songwriter is not enough, as a female in the business. I knew that I was gonna have to kinda take it a step further. And for me that was leaning into the whole, the bell bottoms kind of, you know, retro throwback look,” she said of how she chose the flared pants as her style.
“I felt like it was true to me. I feel like I have an old soul anyway. But also, like I said, I’ve always just been obsessed with anything that I feel like tells a story,” Lainey added. “I pretty much just throw on a bunch of stuff that don’t match and call it a day.”
The “Heart Like a Truck” singer recalled the first time she got the pants as a child and became obsessed with them in a July 2023 interview with Variety.
“I remember my very first pair of bell bottoms. They were blue leopard print. My mama bought ’em. And it got to the point where I was wearing ’em so much, she was like, ‘You gotta take ’em off. We gotta put ’em in the washer.’ But I just feel like things that are throwback come with a good story. So, if you walk in my house, you’ll see like mama’s old china cabinet or my daddy’s old rodeo chaps,” she explained.
It was only natural that when Lainey grew up, she’d find her way back to the pants. After moving to Nashville and struggling to make it in the business, she settled on the look in order to get noticed.
“Probably 2016 is when I decided, all right, if I’m gonna do this, I need to wear bell bottoms and need to wear my vintage shirts and stuff like that, daily. It was about a year before I ended up getting a publishing deal and I just stuck with it,” the Baskin, Louisiana, native told the publication.
Lainey’s 2022 album Bell Bottom Country made her a sensation, as the LP won both the ACM and CMA Album of the Year award, and the artist also took home a Grammy in 2024 for Best Country Album.
