It was the Grammys look that would go down in history.

Jennifer Lopez shut down the red carpet at the 42nd Annual Grammy Awards in 2000, wearing an ultra-plunging green Versace dress that went viral before going viral was really a thing. In fact, it spurred the creation of Google Images, the search engine feature that lets users look up photos online. 

“At the time, it was the most popular search query we had ever seen,” former Google CEO Eric Schmidt wrote in Project Syndicate in 2015. “But we had no surefire way of getting users exactly what they wanted: JLo wearing that dress. Google Image Search was born.”

The barely-there look featured a tropical leaf and bamboo pattern which appeared diaphanous due to the sheer quality of its silk chiffon material. A dazzling citrine brooch held it all in place, expertly positioned below the navel and above the dress’s daring leg slit.

Over two decades on, Lopez’s look remains as popular as ever. Below, learn the story behind Jennifer Lopez’s green dress, including why she almost didn’t wear it to the 2000 Grammy Awards.

The dress was part of Versace’s Spring/Summer 2000 collection.

Before the “Let’s Get Loud” singer made the Versace jungle dress famous, it debuted on the runway. Model Amber Valletta wore the look at the maison’s Spring/Summer 2000 presentation in Milan, as well as in campaigns for the collection.

Donatella Versace credits Lopez’s viral moment in the daring dress with establishing her credibility as a designer. Before the singer, Donatella herself and Spice Girl Geri Halliwell had worn it. “I didn’t break the Internet. And Ginger Spice didn’t either, but JLo did it,” the designer shared at Vogue’s 2019 Forces of Fashion conference.

Lopez’s stylist begged her not to wear it.

Lopez revealed in a 2024 Vogue video interview that her iconic Grammys moment almost got swept into an alternate timeline. Lopez’s then-stylist Andrea Lieberman advised her against wearing the dress because Halliwell and other celebrities had done so already.

“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.’ And so I did. And it caused quite a stir,” Lopez explained. 

Later in the same video, she reflected on the look’s monumental impact. “I guess every generation needs its iconic kind of Marilyn dress, and this is that dress for this generation,” she said. “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.”

Someone’s already called ‘dibs’ on the dress—and it’s not her daughter, Emme.

When you’re the daughter of an A-lister, you get to inherit a wardrobe’s worth of fabulous designer fashion. Lopez’s 17-year-old daughter Emme has already set her sights on some of her superstar mother’s dreamy looks, but in 2018, the singer shared that her then-boyfriend Alex Rodriguez’s daughters wanted the Grammys dress for their own.

“Even Alex’s daughters [will be] like, ‘I want your Grammy dress. Emme can have the other,’” the Kiss of the Spider Woman star told People. “All the girls are getting dibs. It’s like Natasha, Ella, Emme, okay, everybody’s going to get a little bit of something,” she added.

Lopez wore an updated version of the dress at a 2019 Versace show.

Almost twenty years after her Grammys moment broke the Internet, Lopez did it all over again. The artist appeared as a surprise guest at Versace’s Spring/Summer 2020 show in Milan in September 2019. Her introduction even served as a callback to her look inspiring the creation of Google Images.

As seen in a video Donatella shared to her Instagram, attendees watched as the designer asked Google’s virtual assistant to show her images of “the Versace jungle dress.” The bot returned photos of the dress. “Okay, Google, now, show me the real jungle dress,” Donatella said. This time, Lopez strutted down the catwalk in a reimagined version of the original dress, closing the show.

In January 2020, Lopez spoke to Vanity Fair about the experience of recreating ‘The Dress’ nearly two decades on. “The second time I wore it and walked out there, it was such an empowering thing,” she said. “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!’”