Jennifer Lopez almost didn’t wear that famous green Versace dress to the Grammy Awards in 2000 because of a pretty reasonable request from her then-stylist.
“It was a dress that other people had worn already,” the singer said in a video for Vogue, published this week, breaking down some of her most iconic looks.
“You know, my stylist was like, ‘Please don’t wear it, somebody else has worn it.’ I was like, ‘Well, you bought it, and it looks the best, so I’m going to wear it,’” she continued.
“And so I did. And it caused, you know, quite a stir,” Lopez said with a laugh. “I guess every generation needs its iconic kind of Marilyn [Monroe] dress, and this is that dress for this generation. Why it became that? It was just a moment when the wind blew open, and I walked out onto the stage, and it just kinda happened.”
Lopez has opened up before about the on-stage moment that occurred during the Grammys, and the crowd’s startling reaction to her look.
“When I came onstage with David Duchovny, who was the biggest star in the world then, he said to the audience, ‘Nobody is looking at me,’” Lopez said, laughing, in a cover story for W Magazine back in 2013.
“This loud sound started from the back of the room ― it was kind of like a roar, over me in the dress. When I went to my seat, I said, ‘What’s the big deal?!’ Puffy and Benny [Medina] were waiting, and they said, ‘You have to take pictures in that dress.’”
Lopez recently wore an updated version of the dress in 2019, when she closed out the Versace show during Milan Fashion Week. While not an exact replica of the iconic gown, it still made the crowd go crazy:
