Lainey Wilson Comes ‘Full Circle’ With Wrangler Collection: ‘It Reminds Me of My Inner Child’
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Lainey Wilson has reached a full circle moment, thanks to her new collaboration with Wrangler. After announcing a partnership with the brand last year, the country star debuted her very first Wrangler collection on Wednesday (Sept. 25).
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“It’s wild, and also full circle, because before I could even walk my parents had me on the back of a horse and a pair of Wranglers,” Wilson told Billboard of the collection during a fitting in Las Vegas last month. “It’s a weird thing, because I feel like, just looking at these pictures on the wall of the collection just kind of makes me feel at home in a weird way. It just reminds me of, like, my inner child and that little girl, you know?”
The Lainey Wilson x Wrangler collection features unique designs, curve-hugging silhouettes, stylish patchwork, ringer T-shirts, western-inspired outerwear and variations of Wilson’s signature bell bottoms. A female-led design team helped Wilson bring the collection to life, which reflects her modern but retro style.
“My family is Wrangler,” she added. “My daddy thought I really made it after I told him about this [collection]. I told him, I might be working with Wrangler. He’s a man of a few words, but he was like, ‘now that’s something!’ When he says that, you know he’s impressed.”
At the heart of the collection: Wilson’s long-standing connection with Wrangler and her childhood. She wrote her first song at just nine years old, the same year that she received her first pair of bellbottoms.
“Before we even started working, [Wrangler] really got to know me and my story. Even Viv [Vivian Rivetti, Wrangler’s global vice president of design] she just asked me small details about my childhood and what did I think of [this or that], and honestly, a lot of those things ended up in the trucker Storyteller outfit. All of the things that I feel make me, me. That’s how I write songs too. I get to put my story and myself out there, and it’s cool for me to be able to express myself every day with my music, but stepping into something like this, it just really gives me another outlet. I wrote my first song at nine years old, and I thought that’s what I’d be doing forever. I’m still doing that but it’s cool, [to have] other opportunities that come up.”
While reviewing looks in the collection, Wilson pointed out some of the small details that have had a major big impact on her life. For example, her French bulldog makes an appearance in the collection, along with trucks, trailers, horses, a guitar and other nods to her Western style like the name “Hippie Mae,” symbolizing her first pair of bell bottoms and the phrase “Hillbilly Hippie,” which is named after her 2022 song. There’s also a ringer shirt with the number nine on the front symbolizing the age that Wilson wrote her first song, got her first pair of bell bottoms and went to the Grand Ole Opry for the first time.
The collection’s “Hang Tight” ringer tee represents a phrase her father told her as a child. “I remember riding this bucking horse and my daddy’s like, ‘You better hold on. You better hang tight.’ That’s just something I say all the time and then later on, I ended up writing a song called ‘Hang Tight, Honey’ so that’s our current single.”
“There’s so many little hidden [details],” she continued. “If you look close you see a heart [in the collection]. One of my first hits at country radio was a song called ‘Heart Like a Truck,’” Wilson noted of her 2022 single, which was featured in a Dodge Ram commercial.
“The red barn right here just symbolizes my childhood,” she said pointing to another detail in the collection. “I feel like I learned a lot growing up on the back of horse. I learned how to hold on when times get tough and how to pull myself up by the bootstraps. The tractor right here, anytime I wanted to spend time with my daddy, I had to go get on the tractor with him.”
Fashion isn’t much different from music, Wilson explained of what she learned during the process of creating her Wrangler line. “[Fashion] has a lot of similarities to the music business. This record of mine that is about to come out, we’ve been working on it [since] before the other one came out and that’s how this line is, and probably all the future things that we do together. You work on it way in advance, because it’s got to go through so many hands to get to the consumer. And that’s how it is with music, it takes a team.”
Shop items from Wilson’s Wrangler collection below.
Wrangler x Lainey Wilson Hang Tight Tee
$44.99
Lainey Wilson x Wrangler Life of Lainey Trucker Jacket in Storyteller Print
$139.99
Wrangler x Lainey Wilson Moxie Western Denim Shirt
$79.99
Wrangler x Lainey Wilson Daydream Raw Hem Bell Bottom
$89.99
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