How can you go?
02.28.00
A scandalous dress is a great career booster. Long before Jennifer Lopez bared almost all at the 2000 Grammys, starlets were counting on big media coverage of skin-baring dresses.
Remember Elizabeth Hurley's revealing Versace number, with the safety pins up the side? Or Ashley Judd's split-to-there dress that gave an eyeful? Or Cher's long-running exhibitionist costumes?
Lopez's floral, deeply V-ed $10,000 Versace number is a vast departure from her refined look in Badgley Mischka at last year's Oscars. And it seems to be in stark contrast to what she said in an interview with the Calgary-Sun in a July '98 interview, where she is attributed as saying she's "confident that she can be sexy without having to disrobe."
The speculation from the media after the Grammys was mostly about how the dress was held together, not why she chose such a number (although it's been hinted that it successfully drew the attention away from Sean "Puffy" Combs' same day indictment on bribery charges).
The Associated Press reported that the dress was probably held together with tape, and the NY Post tapped designer Randolph Duke to speculate that the dress was kept from indecent exposure by cosmetic glue. Duke ought to know how those flimsy contraptions work after donning Minnie Driver with one of his bare creations for the Golden Globes.
The March Glamour magazine offered this advice for boosting your charisma, citing Jennifer Lopez as a prime example. "To pump up your SC [sexual charisma] quotient, make lots of lingering eye contact and feel good about yourself and your body," the magazine quips. Lopez evidently feels very good about her body.
The question is how do you feel about yours? Seems this bare upper torso look is a hit with celebs and designers alike.
Britney Spears sported the look at the American Music Awards, and designer Donatella Versace is apparently hot on the idea - showing a modified version again for Fall/Winter 2000/2001. Even "real woman" designer Donna Karan is showing the lots of chest-area skin in her designs.
Bare-to-there looks aren't exactly practical (try bending over to pick up a child) or flattering (the truth is Lopez did look great in the dress, but how many others would?) And unless it's made exactly to fit your body, it's probably going to end up looking like some sort of Diane Von Furstenburg wrap dress that has come undone.
So don't stock up on tape and cosmetic glue just yet.
