Why midlife women are slipping back into that J Lo dress
Twenty years later, Versace’s barely-there showstopper is back. Caroline Leaper reports
Is any outfit truly shocking on the red carpet any more? We’ve seen huge princess dresses and tiny minidresses, Björk’s swan halter-neck and Lady Gaga’s meat gown. “Naked” dresses (those comprising little actual material, and slashed to show off the figure) have been normalised on famous women of all ages. At the Grammys tonight, we will undoubtedly see variations on all these themes.
But 20 years ago, the story was quite different. Jennifer Lopez wore Versace’s slashed-to-the-navel jungle print dress to the Grammys in 2000, outdoing all of the other celebrities in attendance and causing a shockand-awe reaction in the media.
The dress went on display at the V&A, as well as at The Grammy Museum in Los Angeles.
Eric Schmidt, the president of Google, would later say that the dress had prompted the creation of Google Images. “It was the most popular search query we had ever seen,” he said. Before then, Google had only offered text results when people used the search engine. How’s that for a fashion moment?
At Milan Fashion Week last September, Donatella Versace went all out to acknowledge the forthcoming anniversary. Sixty looks inspired by the house’s turn-of-themillennium design codes paraded by, working the iconic jungle print into everything from raincoats to pencil skirts.
The last look was the actual dress, updated and modelled by Lopez herself, now 50 and arguably looking better than ever in it. The new version of “The Dress” showed even more skin, having lost its sleeves s and featuring added cutouts at the waist.
The appearance of Lopez generated erated a global reaction from the Instagram gram generation. Advertising analysts at Launchmetrics estimate that the e stunt prompted $9.4million (£7.2million) on) worth of media mentions and online nline engagement in the days that followed. owed.
A few months on and the Versace ace collection is about to arrive in stores. ores. After all that hype and attention, , will anyone actually buy the JLo look? k?
The answer might surprise you. u. Despite this being a dress that surely urely only JLo, or someone with a figure ure like JLo, can pull off, “The Dress” is now one of the most wanted pieces from rom the spring collections.
Net-a-Porter’s buying team reports ports unprecedented interest from their EIP (extremely important people) customer list.
Elizabeth von der Goltz, the company’s global buying director, bought two versions; the embellished runway incarnation which will retail at £6,960 and a “commercial” version, with sleeves, for £4,850, described as more similar to the dress worn by JLo at the Grammys in 2000.
Ida Petersson, womenswear buying director at BrownsFashion.com confirms the interest from customers wanting to buy the dress was instant – the JLo effect translated directly into sales. “As soon as Jennifer Lopez hit the runway wearing that epic dress, myself and the team had texts arriving [from VIP customers who wanted to pre-order it],” she explains. “That’s the power of Instagram. The waiting list for this dress is insane, we now have four times as many people down on the list as we bought stock for.”
Petersson notes that the price tag hasn’t deterred customers at all. “It’s [almost] a £7,000 dress, so it’s rare to see this sort of response,” she explains. “Demand is normally limited to a smaller customer base when we’re talking about something at this price point.
“We’ve also bought into the more commercial option for those looking for something a little less risqué.”
Harrods is planning to celebrate the dress’s arrival at the store on February 15 with a dedicated window display to launch it to customers and allow passers-by to admire it.
E-tailer Moda Operandi has had the sleeved version of the dress available to pre-order on its site for weeks, and describes buying it as “a chance to add a piece of fashion history to your wardrobe”.
That last point, perhaps, is the key to the real-life appeal. There are women who are buying the dress in order to have their own JLo moment; to impress their friends and show off their figures at special birthday parties, black-tie bla galas, or, let’s imagine, jus just for their own enjoyment when lo lolling around the house.
There will be oth others who have bought it with Insta Instagram in mind; what a status symbo symbol it would be to show that, firstly, you yo can pull off a dress like Lopez did did, showing that amount of glowing, gym-toned flesh, and, secondly, th that you can afford it. The potential for “likes” online is surely endless. endless
There is also a school of thought that this could be a savvy investment. Vint Vintage versions of the dress, produc produced in 2000, are impossible to com come by because it was bespoke, meaning mea the limited number for sale now no will likely gain value in years to c come.
A 2017 sale of ra rare Gianni Versace pieces from the Ni Nineties saw collectors paying t thousands for items that didn’t hold h anywhere near as much pop pop-cultural or feminist significan significance as this dress.
“The second tim time I wore it and walked out there, it i was such an empowering thing,” Lopez has said of her revisiting it. “Twenty years had gone by, and I t think for women, knowing you can pu put on a dress 20 years later – it reson resonated. It was like, ‘Yes, you know, life is not over.’”
The full circle would wo be complete if she were to wear it again on the Grammys red carpet carpe tonight.