Dolly Parton died on Aug. 25, and within days, the demand for her merchandise had exploded across nearly every major retail and resale platform on the internet.
According to Rolling Stone, online marketplace Depop reported a 10,305% increase in searches for "Dolly T-shirts" since the singer passed. The site currently has more than a thousand listings for Parton tees, including vintage concert shirts and tour merch dating back to the 1980s and 1990s. Prices range from $3 for fan-made gear to upwards of $900 for authentic vintage pieces.
The surge was not limited to Depop. On eBay, searches for Dolly Parton T-shirts increased 140 times compared to the day before news of her death broke on the 25th. The platform currently lists more than 5,000 Parton shirts, with vintage tees from the 1970s going for more than $1,000.
Retailers Amazon and Walmart are also selling through their inventory. Both sites listed Parton tees among their bestselling products of the week, with thousands of shirts sold between the two retailers in just the last few days.
Among the top sellers on Amazon is an officially-licensed portrait shirt that more than 3,000 shoppers purchased in the last few days, according to the platform. A second official shirt from Parton's Amazon merch store sold more than 1,000 units in the same window. It comes in more than a dozen colors and sizes ranging from XS to 6XL.
The spike in merchandise interest mirrors a broader pattern seen when major artists die, with streaming numbers, physical sales, and memorabilia markets often surging simultaneously in the days following a death.
