Photo: Getty Images
There are times where fashion and pop culture collide to make history. Even within this pantheon of paradigm-shifting style moments—the stuff of swan dresses, princess pink gowns, and Cher’s midriff—nothing can really hold a candle to Jennifer Lopez in Versace at the 2000 Grammy Awards. The singer arrived wearing a plunge-front chiffon number in a tropical green floral that blew open when she walked, to the awe and delight of photographers, the audience, the nascent internet, and Lopez herself. “It was just one of those perfect moments,” Lopez recently told Vogue, recollecting the red carpet turn that would vault her into the stratosphere of style.
At the time of the ceremony, Lopez was filming The Wedding Planner when her stylist, Andrea Lieberman, presented her with a selection of looks to wear to the Grammys. Nothing seemed right, and so she put off finding a dress until the day of the show. When Lieberman appeared with three dresses in tow, Lopez knew the green Versace was it—even if it had already been worn by Geri Halliwell and Donatella Versace herself. “This is what we’re going to wear; this is it,” Lopez remembers telling her stylist. And so, décolletage, abs, and legs on full display, the star hit the red carpet.
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“I didn’t think it was all that risqué, to be honest,” she demurs. But the rest of the world did. That evening, Google searches for Lopez in the dress peaked so high it inspired Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page and CEO Eric Schmidt to launch a photo search service, Google Images. “The dress was just provocative enough to make people interested,” Lopez continues. “That was a moment that captured people’s imaginations, I think . . . in terms of my career, this dress really marked a moment in time. Even if you don’t know my music and you don’t know my movies, people know about that moment and that dress. That was it.”
The rest, as they say, is history—but history can change. To mark the 20th anniversary of “The Dress,” Lopez flew to Milan to walk Versace’s Spring 2020 runway in a replica of her original look. See her hit the catwalk—and reflect on 20 years as a Versace muse—here.
Filmed at the Lotte New York Palace
Director: Max Bartick
DP: Emmanuella Zachariou
DP, Milan: John Fisher
AC: David Root
Sound: Tyler Postiglione
Set designer: Javier Irigoyen
Producer: Alyssa Marino
Producer, Milan: James Graley
Associate producers: Sam Marine, Maya Solo
Editors: Sam Norton, Tim Beeston, Theo Rosenthal
Originally published on Vogue.com
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