Over the weekend Jennifer Lopez broke the internet – which was the plan all along according to Versace – when she donned a reinvented version of the jaw-dropping Versace jungle dress that she originally wore to the Grammy Awards 19 years ago.
Lopez took to the runway for Versace’s Spring/Summer 2020 show in Milan and according to the show notes, the original dress saw millions of people turn to Google in an effort to search for the dress back in 2000. While Google was launched in 1998, Google Images wasn’t released into 2001. Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt revealed there were so many searches for photos of the J-Lo dress after the Grammys that it inspired the tech giant to launch Google Images.
“Today we live in a technological world, but back then, one event promoted the creation of a new tool that now has become part of our lives,” read the show notes.
Although the reincarnation of the dress that broke the internet still has the same daring neckline, Versace has updated it by removing the sleeves, adding a billowing train, an open back and cut-outs through the midriff.
Since Lopez’s runway moment, she has revealed that she came very close to wearing another dress on the night of the Grammys 19 years ago.
In a new video for Vogue Lopez has revealed that her stylist, Andrea Lieberman brought her lots of looks to try on but nothing stood out. It was later that Lieberman came back with just three dresses for Lopez to try – the now-famous Versace dress was one of them.
“She came with like three dresses, which I’m very spoiled now and people come with 1,000 dresses when they come to do a fitting for me. But that day there was like two or three dresses,” Lopez recalls.
Lopez says that while everyone in her film trailer praised the gown, Lieberman wasn’t convinced.
“Andrea, my stylist, was like, ‘No! You can’t wear that one.’ And I was like, ‘Why did you bring it then?’” Lopez says. “She was like, ‘No, you can’t wear that one, somebody else has worn it, actually, Donatella herself has worn it. One of the Spice Girls has worn it. Sandra Bullock has worn it in another colour. I said, ‘This is what we’re going to wear. This is it.’ I really didn’t think about it. I didn’t think it was all that risqué to be honest. I was more excited that it was the GRAMMYs. I wasn’t really thinking about the dress that much. I was just glad I had something to wear.”
