J Lo’s Famous Green Dress Has Made A Comeback In Versace’s Spring/Summer 2020 Campaign
While some younger folks may not remember Jenny from the Block, EVERYONE knows who J Lo is. An iconic, impactful, and inspiring presence in Hollywood since the 1990s, Jennifer Lopez continues to blow our minds as an incredibly talented actress and performer (Have you seen Hustlers yet? Hot damn.). And in case she doesn’t impress you enough with her tireless schedule and extensive resume, have you ever laid eyes on this woman? It’s become almost cliché, but J Lo truly seems to defy the process of aging—if anything, she is actually becoming more gorgeous over time. J Lo just turned 50, and in addition to wowing us with her grace, authenticity, and talent, she is a living example of how nutrition and exercise can really work wonders on a person—OR, let’s face it, she might just a mystical creature who is totally untouched by the laws of biology. Quién sabe.
With all this in mind, it may come as a shock that J Lo—though she certainly knows she’s a queen—hasn’t always been convinced of her ability to kick life’s booty as an independent woman. In a recent interview with The New York Times Magazine, J Lo spoke about her role in Hustlers, saying, “I’ve always been so much a romantic, so much about having a relationship, and this woman is the total opposite. And to play that, to live in those shoes, to walk in those very high heels, in that skin, made me realize I’m out here on my own.”
“That’s what I need to teach my daughter,” she added. “That aspect of it: that you can do it on your own.”
And when you examine J Lo’s career, she has truly done so much, visibly growing and evolving as an artist since her breakout role in the 1997 Selena biopic.
Several folks may not know that amid all of J Lo’s hot bops and cinematic hits, she also pioneered Google Images . . . well, kind of. She didn’t so much as “pioneer” Google Images as inspire its creation back in 2000. And why, you might ask, was J Lo the reason for this now-ubiquitous tool, a tool utilized on a literally constant basis to search all kinds of random content?
Oh, we’ll tell you why. You might remember a dress—a green dress, with long sleeves, a plunging neckline, and sheer jungle-print fabric that trailed all the way to the floor. An exotic dress. A Versace dress. This exotic Versace dress:
Credit: Jennifer Lopez / YouTube
Jennifer Lopez wore this dress to the 42nd Annual Grammy Awards in 2000, and people were SHOOK. They took to the internet, hoping to find photos of this groundbreaking moment in fashion, but they fell short—at the time, Google only loaded text-based search results. And while it took some time for Google Images to come about after this frenzy, J Lo is credited as the impetus for its existence.
In 2015, former Google CEO and executive chairman Eric Schmidt wrote on Project Syndicate, “People wanted more than just text. This first became apparent after the 2000 Grammy Awards, where Jennifer Lopez wore a green dress that, well, caught the world’s attention. At the time, it was the most popular search query we had ever seen. But we had no surefire way of getting users exactly what they wanted: JLo wearing that dress. Google Image Search was born.”
And the Google Image search for the green dress has persisted over the past 20 years. Cathy Edwards, director of engineering and product for Google Images, told GQ that “people are still doing queries for ‘Jennifer Lopez green dress,’ ‘Jennifer Lopez jungle print dress,’ ‘Jennifer Lopez Grammys dress,’ [that] sort of thing.” And now those searches are probably surging right now, for a couple of reasons.
J Lo appeared in a remixed version of that infamous green dress back in September, when Versace debuted its Spring/Summer 2020 collection at Milan Fashion Week. And recently, she’s appeared in a Versace ad campaign with Kendall Jenner, rocking futuristic digs that “explore the blurring of lines between public and private life in today’s internet society,” according to an Instagram caption.
In a statement about her recent collaboration with Versace, J Lo said, “In terms of my career, the Jungle dress really marked a moment in time. To me, Versace represents empowerment and putting something beautiful out into the world. It’s a dream to collaborate with my friend Donatella again on this gorgeous campaign and to create something new and fresh out of a piece of iconic fashion history.
Well, we’re excited too, J Lo. Just check the Google Image stats for this new iteration of that classic green dress.
