Katy Perry Was Cowgirl Barbie at the 2016 ACM Awards

Racked is no longer publishing. Thank you to everyone who read our work over the years. The archives will remain available here; for new stories, head over to Vox.com, where our staff is covering consumer culture for The Goods by Vox. You can also see what we’re up to by signing up here.

Katy Perry arrived at the American Country Music Awards dressed as your 4-year-old niece's idea of a cowgirl. It's a vision shared by Moschino's Creative Director and frequent Perry collaborator Jeremy Scott, the man responsible for her technicolor look (he also walked her down the red carpet).

A reasonable thing to wonder is, "Why is Katy Perry at the ACM Awards, especially when there's a perfectly good iHeartRadio Awards, which honors her pop music peers, to attend tonight?" She's there to present the Tex Ritter Award to American treasure Dolly Parton. They'll also perform a duet, a combination of Parton's "Coat of Many Colors" and the classic "Jolene." "But that seems so strange" is another reasonable thing to be thinking. Well, there's a perfectly good rationale for that. Here's the full look, including fringe, fishnets, belt buckle, cow hide, and probably a bumpit in there somewhere:

Photo: Rick Diamond/Getty Images