Spice Girls star Geri Halliwell wore the Versace jungle dress one month before J.Lo
"In terms of my career, this dress really marked the moment in time. If you don't know my music and you don't know my movies, people know about that moment and that dress," Jennifer Lopez explained to Vogue about her iconic Versace dress from the 2000 Grammys.
The jungle print plunging gown was revisited for the 20-year-anniversary of the dress -- debuting a reworked version for the finale of Versace's Spring 2020 show during Milan Fashion Week, where J.Lo walked the runway. (The dress is available on Moda Operandi)
However, what most people don't know is that J.Lo was actually not the first to wear the green silk chiffon gown. One month before Lopez's stylist at the time, Andrea Lieberman (who now spearheads A.L.C.), presented the singer with dress options for the awards show, Leiberman insisted she not wear the dress since Geri Halliwell from Spice Girls had already worn it.
Yep, Ginger Spice rocked the daring-cut dress to the 1st Annual NRJ Music Awards in Cannes one month prior to J.Lo presenting Best R&B Album at the 42nd Grammy Awards. And before that, Donatella herself wore it to the 1999 Met Gala, where the theme was 'Rock Style' right after Amber Valetta debuted it on the RTW runway.
J.Lo might not have been the originator of the jungle dress, but she certainly made the navel-plunging gown the most famous, inspiring Google to launch Google Images after the search engine was too ill-equipped to handle the search traffic.
