What to Know
On February 23, 2000, Jennifer Lopez joined the pantheon of pop culture icons when she donned a jungle-green, floral printed Versace dress. The singer shocked people with the sheer dress that was open to her navel and held by a green brooch. If you ask most people about JLo’s legacy, that dress is absolutely going to be something that gets mentioned.
Beyond its space in the fashion history books, it also has a special significance. The dress can be credited as one of the reasons we now have the Google Images search option. And Lopez thinks that she deserves more than just credit.
She thinks that maybe Google should have cut her a check.
During her June 30, 2026 appearance on the popular webseries SubwayTakes with Kareem Rahma, Jennifer Lopez revealed that she was an influential part of the creation of the popular search function.
“I wore the Versace dress. Because people searched for it, they invented Google Images,” she explained. “Sergey [Brin, cofounder of Google along with Larry Page] and all the guys who invented Google confirmed.” The platform was created by Huican Zhu and Susan Wojcicki before it launched in 2001.
“I feel like they owe me a check,” she said. “They should’ve done that for good karma because they’re probably trillionaires or whatever. Just to be nice.”
In a 2015 article for Project Syndicate, Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt said that the public’s demand to see Lopez in that dress was the “most popular query” the search engine had ever seen.
Since Jennifer Lopez first wore the dress, it has become an iconic part of pop culture.
In an interview with journalist Furvah Shah for the UK edition of Elle while promoting her Netflix romcom with co-star Brett Goldstein, Lopez talked about the staying power of that Versace dress.
First, Shah asked which of the two of them is one of the reasons Google Images exists. Lopez didn’t say anything at first, prompting Goldstein to ask if it’s true.
“Yes, and I think the internet is the devil, so…” she replied. “I’m the reason Google Images was created,” she told Goldstein. “I didn’t code it.”
“It’s incredible,” she said. “Just the green dress itself, how it’s become like that Marilyn Monroe dress. It’s become something people dress up in all the time. It still blows my mind. It still hits me every once in a while.”
Most recently, the dress was featured in the hit Prime Video series Off-Campus, which Lopez acknowledged in the Elle interview. Actress Mika Abdalla, who wore a costume inspired by the dress, called the experience “unreal.”
“My first fitting was like, put on this nude leotard and we’re going to cut it up and pin all this s— to you,” Abdalla said in an interview clip shared on TikTok. “It was five fittings. It was insane, I was so taped in. I was ready to dance the night away.”
Lopez isn’t planning on letting the dress go anytime soon.
During an appearance on the May 27, 2026 episode of Jimmy Kimmel Live!, the host asked if she still had the dress that made her an icon.
“I have both dresses,” she told Kimmel. “If anybody remembers, I wore the one to the Grammys and then about five years ago, we did the 20th anniversary, and I have that dress,” she explained.
In 2019, designer Donatella Versace recreated an updated version of the dress for Lopez to wear in the brand’s Spring 2020 fashion show.
“You have to do that every 20 years,” Kimmel joked. But Lopez took his suggestion seriously.
“I’m gonna make a promise right now. I’m gonna wear it in 20 years,” she said. “And it’s gonna look good. You’re not gonna hate it.”
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