Jennifer Lopez's plunging, green, jungle print Versace gown is one of the most talked about fashion moments in history, but it turns out, choosing the daring dress was a last-minute decision.
It was the day of the Grammy Awards in 2000 and Lopez, who was fast becoming a global superstar for her movie "Selena" and her debut album, "On the 6," wasn't sure what she was going to wear to the show. She reflected on the story behind the dress in her new YouTube series, "Moments of Fashion."
"Usually, if you come to a fitting of mine, there's like are tons of dresses, tons of shoes. it's crazy. There's always so many choices," Lopez, 49, said. "But this day, we really had a choice between two dresses. One was kind of a white dress or something like that and the other was the Versace jungle print dress."
Lopez said her stylist urged her to wear the white dress since three other people, including designer Donatella Versace, had previously been photographed in the plunging green gown. However, when she stepped out of the dressing room and heard her manager Benny Medina's reaction, she knew it was the once.
"Benny goes: 'That's it! Don't even talk about it. That's the dress!'" Lopez said.
Thanks to a generous amount of double-stick tape, Lopez said she felt confident walking the red carpet without having to worry about a wardrobe malfunction.
"We hit the red carpet and it was a frenzy! The flashes started going in a way that it's not usually," she said. "There was an extra kinetic energy there."
Lopez said she didn't realize the extra attention her dress was getting, since she was so focused on rushing to get backstage to present the first award of the night alongside "X-Files" star David Duchovny.
When they walked on stage, Duchovny quipped: "This is the first time in five or six years that I'm sure nobody is looking at me!"
Lopez was nominated that night in the best dance recording category for "Let's Get Loud." While she didn't win a Grammy, her iconic Grammy look was still splashed across front pages around the world the next day.
It also inspired knockoffs and even Halloween costumes.
"One dress can change the trajectory of how people dress for the next 10 years. It's a crazy impact that fashion can have and those fashion statements can have in solidifying a personality, a moment, a style, a movement, all of those things. It was a really exciting time," Lopez said.
And the rest is history!
