Letter from the Editor-In-Chief: BELLA Magazine’s 2026 Icon Issue

here are moments in publishing when an issue changes while you're creating it.

This was one of those moments.

Few women embodied the worlds of Fashion, Arts + Culture as completely as Dolly Parton did.

Then, on August 25, the world lost her. Suddenly, this cover meant something entirely different.

And yet, almost immediately, my mind went somewhere else. Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. Summer 2019.

That year, I traveled to the Smoky Mountains with my family. We spent our days exploring Pigeon Forge, including a wonderfully memorable day at Dollywood's Splash Country. We visited businesses Dolly had helped build, learned more about her story and began to understand just how deeply connected she remained to the place that had raised her.

I had known Dolly Parton the icon. Pigeon Forge introduced me to Dolly Parton the woman.

There was something about being there that made you understand that her relationship with East Tennessee wasn't manufactured for a brand or attached to her name for publicity.

You could feel her.

Her spirit seemed to touch every part of our vacation.

There was warmth there. Pride. Kindness. A sense that this enormously successful woman had never forgotten where she came from—and that she had quite literally put her money where her mouth was by investing back into the community that had given her so much.

Even my own little transformation happened there.

It was in Pigeon Forge that I bought my first pair of cowboy boots and my first real cowboy hat—a Stetson.

Maybe it was Tennessee getting to me. Maybe it was Dolly.

I like to think it was a little bit of both.

We laughed. We explored. We made memories as a family that remain incredibly vivid to me today. The experience left such an impression that the following year, I returned to Pigeon Forge with one of my best friends with her daughter.

There are places you visit. And then there are places that somehow stay with you.

Pigeon Forge will forever be one of those places for me and my family. And when I think about why, so much of it comes back to the feeling Dolly helped create there.

That memory feels especially poignant as I write this letter seven years later.

Because this issue Is not intended to be about Dolly's death.

It is intended to be about Dolly.

About the little girl from Tennessee who dreamed beyond everything she could see around her.

About the songwriter who understood the human heart.

About the woman who could walk into a room covered in rhinestones and never confuse femininity with weakness.

About the entrepreneur who understood that success meant very little if it couldn't create opportunity for others.

About the philanthropist who took something deeply personal—her father's inability to read and write—and transformed it into Dolly Parton's Imagination Library, an initiative that would eventually put hundreds of millions of books into children's hands.

And about a woman who somehow remained unmistakably herself through seven decades of extraordinary fame.

That part of Dolly's story resonates deeply with me.

As women, we receive so many messages about who we're supposed to become in order to succeed.

Be polished—but not too much.

Ambitious—but still likable.

Confident—but never intimidating.

Beautiful—but effortless about it.

Successful—but somehow apologetic for wanting success in the first place.

Dolly seemed to reject the entire premise.

She was glamorous because she loved glamour.

She was ambitious because she had enormous dreams.

She was funny enough to laugh at herself and smart enough to know exactly what she was building.

She understood that you didn't have to diminish one part of yourself to make another part more acceptable to the world.

There is something incredibly BELLA about that.

Fashion is ultimately about expression.

Art is about telling the truth.

Culture is what remains when that expression and truth become bigger than one person.

Dolly gave us all three.

And perhaps what I understood during that first trip to Pigeon Forge was that her greatest legacy couldn't be measured only in records, awards, movies or rhinestones.

It was in what she gave back. It was in the opportunities she created.It was in the community she never forgot. It was in the feeling of a town that seemed to carry her warmth everywhere you went.

I felt it in 2019. My family felt it. And all these years later, I still remember it.

So this issue isn't our goodbye. It's our thank-you.

Thank you for the songs. Thank you for the stories. Thank you for the laughter. Thank you for the books. Thank you for the sparkle.

Thank you for reminding us that where we come from can remain part of where we're going.

And perhaps most importantly, thank you for showing generations of women that there is tremendous power in knowing exactly who you are—and having the courage to remain that woman no matter how big the world around you becomes.

Pigeon Forge will always have a little piece of my family's heart.

And now I understand why.

This one's for you, Dolly.

With love,

Vanessa Coppes