The Story Behind Jennifer Lopez's Most Iconic Fashion Moment

While people love to drag Jennifer Lopez for her complicated dating history and sometimes out-of-touch effort to seem relatable because of her Bronx roots, you've got to give it up for her in one respect: J.Lo always looks great. Besides being one of the token celebrities who look like they haven't aged in 20 years, the "Love Don't Cost a Thing" singer has impeccable style. And when talking about her fashion, it's hard to forget the Lopez look that stands above the rest: the green Versace dress.

First released in '99 and worn by others before Lopez, the jungle-print Versace dress with its ever-so-plunging neckline didn't make a splash (or rather a cannonball!) in fashion and pop culture until she wore it to the Grammy Awards in 2000. It quickly became her most iconic fashion moment, which she paid homage to during Milan Fashion Week in September 2019. Lopez walked the runway in a new version of the dress, later joined by its creator, Donatella Versace. It was a feel-good moment for the singer, as she told Vanity Fair in 2020. "Twenty years had gone by, and I think for women, knowing you can put on a dress 20 years later — it resonated. It was like, 'Yes, you know, life is not over at 20!'" she said. But this dress did more than just bring newfound attention to a young Lopez; it also led to a major internet advancement.

In a 2019 video from her YouTube series "Fashion Moments," Jennifer Lopez took us back to the night she first wore the dress. "And we hit the red carpet and it was a frenzy," she said, referring to her and Sean "Diddy" Combs, whom she was dating at the time. "I had no idea that it was about this dress," she said later in the video. 

Specifically, the bold ensemble generated such a craze online that it prompted Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin to break new ground on the then-text-only search engine. "At the time, it was the most popular search query we had ever seen," wrote Eric Schmidt, ex-Google executive chairman, in a January 2015 Project Syndicate essay. "But we had no surefire way of getting users exactly what they wanted: [J.Lo] wearing that dress," he said, noting that Lopez's bombshell award show look proved the Google Images functionality was needed. 

We're glad Lopez decided to wear the dress that fateful night. As she revealed to Vogue's "Life in Looks" in February 2024, her stylist vetoed the dress because, "It was a dress that other people had worn already." Fortunately, Lopez was already attached to the garb, telling her stylist, "'Well, you bought it, and it looks the best, so I'm going to wear it.'"