At the 2025 CFDA Awards, supermodel Amber Valletta didn’t just walk the red carpet—she walked into fashion history to remind everyone that she wore it first. The “it” in question? The legendary Versace jungle-print dress that became one of the most talked-about garments of all time. Yes, that dress—the one that broke the internet before the internet even knew how to break.
Valletta arrived at the Museum of Natural History in an archival Versace masterpiece from the brand’s spring 2000 collection—a plunging, palm-leaf green silk chiffon with a neckline that dares gravity and a leg slit that still feels defiant 25 years later. Before it became synonymous with Jennifer Lopez and the birth of Google Images, it was Valletta who first wore the design down the runway and in Versace’s late-’99 ad campaign.
Photo: Getty Images
“It’s the first time I’ve ever worn it on a red carpet,” Valletta said with a grin. “I’ve kept it all these years—it’s magical.” And fittingly, she wore it to honor Donatella Versace, recipient of the CFDA’s Positive Change Award. A tribute from muse to maestro.
A Versace campaign starring Amber Valletta.
Photographed by Steven Meisel, with hair styled by Garren.
Photo: Getty Images
The dress’s mythology is practically pop culture canon at this point: Donatella wore it to the 1999 Met Gala, Geri Halliwell slipped it on soon after, and then came Lopez—whose appearance at the 2000 Grammys sent search engines into a frenzy so massive that it literally birthed Google Images. “People wanted more than just text,” former Google exec Eric Schmidt once wrote. “They wanted J.Lo in that dress.”
Victor VIRGILE/Gamma-Rapho/Getty Images
Two decades later, the jungle dress lives many lives—J.Lo has re-worn it on SNL, revived it on Versace’s runway for the 20th anniversary, and even donated one version to the Grammy Museum. It’s been memed, remade, and reinterpreted on RuPaul’s Drag Race. But last night, as Valletta glided past the cameras, it felt like a full-circle moment—a quiet flex that only a true fashion insider could pull off.
