25 Years Later, Amber Valletta Revisits A Legendary Versace Dress
Last night, at the 2025 CFDA Awards, supermodel Amber Valletta presented Donatella Versace with the Positive Change Award, honouring the Italian designer for her LGBTQ+ advocacy work and ongoing support of young talent. Naturally, Valletta – a longtime Versace muse – was bound to wear one of Donatella’s looks on the red carpet. But Valletta did not choose just any old gown. Instead, she revived one of Versace’s most iconic designs of all time.
Yes, we are talking about the sexy, plunging, jungle-print sheer gown that Jennifer Lopez wore to the 2000 Grammys. It was a dress so talked-about it effectively gave birth to Google Images. (The search engine company could not deliver results for the combination of “J Lo” and “Versace” searches, so it built Google Images to fix the problem.) Lopez even re-wore it on the Versace runway, when she made a surprise cameo in the house’s spring/summer 2020 show in Milan.
Still, while it may be easy to dub it the J Lo dress, here is a fun fact: back in the spring/summer 2000 fashion season, when the dress first appeared on the catwalk, Valletta opened the show in a short version of the style – so you could say the model actually wore it before J Lo. Her appearance at the 2025 CFDA Awards served as an extremely chic reminder that she did it first!