Baggy Jeans, Baby Hairs, and Haute Couture: Jennifer Lopez Sounds off on Her Life in Looks

Hi, Vouge, this is Jennifer Lopez,

and this is My Life In Looks.

[relaxed music]

Well, this is me as a Fly Girl on In Living Color.

This was actually the second or third season.

This wasn't the original Fly Girls.

This was like the Fly Girls 2.0, if you will.

The whole thing about the Fly Girls

really was their fashion.

I believe Michelle Cole was the costume designer

on the show, and she was really

about giving them kind of a couture look.

Not totally hip hop or street, having an essence of that,

but really kind of elevating it and making it more vogue,

if you will.

This is one of my favorite looks from Selena.

This is where we sang

that whole Bidi Bidi Bom Bom montage.

Selena had a lot of great looks,

but everything was kind of just a plain bra and the leggings

and it would be a kind of always a bejeweled bra,

but this one was a little bit more interesting,

and she would kind of make all her own costumes.

I don't know if she made this one, but it was pretty great,

'cause now she added the Superwoman cummerbund thing to it

and had the straps on it,

and it was a little bit more of a costume, actually.

Obviously, this is what has become now

the famous green Versace dress

that I wore 20-something years ago now.

I wore it to the Grammys.

It was a dress that other people had worn already.

My stylist was like, Please don't wear it.

Somebody else has worn it.

I was like, well, you bought it,

and it looks the best, so I'm gonna wear it, and so I did,

and it caused quite a stir.

I think it's always been a collaboration

with all the stylists that I've worked with.

I've worked with Andrea Lieberman for many years,

and then I've worked with Rob and Mariel

up until the present, and it's always been a collaboration.

I guess every generation needs its iconic

kind of Marilyn dress,

and this is that dress for this generation.

Why it became that?

It was just a moment when the wind blew open

and I walked out onto the stage

and it just kind of happened.

Oh, this is a favorite Halloween costume of a lot of people.

This is me at the MTV Awards

when I won for best rap collaboration.

Again, this is one of those things

where I had this big gown and everything.

Diddy at the time, who was called Puffy, was like,

you need to just wear a pair of white jeans and a T-shirt,

and I was like, what?

But I kinda liked it, so I put it on.

My stylist gave me this bandana,

and it was actually a very cool moment.

I know it's MTV Awards, and I should get real dressed up,

but instead, I'm just gonna wear a pair of low-rise jeans

and a cutoff tank top.

This is from one of my music videos, from I'm Real.

This is a funny story because again, one of those moments

where the stylist brings all these clothes,

and then I wanna wear the free juicy sweat shorts

that were sent for me for my personal life,

so that's what I did.

I like baby hairs and big hoops and gold jewelry.

Buns, bonitos, we used to call them,

which was very kind of a Puerto Rican thing to do,

is like moms used to put bun and the baby hairs

and the hoops and the nameplates and all that,

and all that became kind of signature part of my style.

I always kept that kind of urban streetwear thing

with Timberlands and with Adidas sneakers,

and I always stick with those things,

'cause it just feels like me.

It feels like the Bronx, it feels like lil' Jenny.

This is the This is Me...Then album cover.

Again, kinda classic style for me.

It's like a normal top and a little pair of shorts

and throw a beanie on, 'cause I love it.

It's like I always kind of did things that felt good to me,

and then we designed around that,

and I think that is the key.

This wasn't something that people were doing at the time,

but it wound up defining that time

and definitely defining my moment in that time,

so I love this.

This is one of my favorite album covers.

This is amazing, kind of very classic shot.

I love this.

I love menswear, first of all,

and I love when people try to kind of reinvent you.

I was known for kind of the long,

kind of flowy, honey-colored hair.

Here, they kind of pulled my hair back and made it look dark

and made me more masculine,

and I really enjoyed kind of that vibe.

I actually really like menswear.

I fancy myself very masculine at times,

wearing jeans and Timberlands and big coats and stuff

and baggy clothes.

I love that whole vibe, so I was very into this.

I remember this Vogue cover.

This is 2012.

I love this. We shot this with Matt Marcus.

You know, I'm not a big red lip person,

but having the red lip here, they made it look so beautiful,

and my hair was a little bit darker at that time,

and with the beach in the background,

they just really created a beautiful image.

This was another Versace moment at the Met,

and anytime I get to go to the Met with Donatella,

I really enjoy it.

She's a lot of fun, and they're so kind of generous

with creating looks for me,

and this was called the Dragon Dress.

As you can see, there's like a dragon.

This is the Hustlers poster.

I actually really like this.

I don't like all my movie posters,

but this one I really love.

I thought. this was perfect.

Actually, when I was researching Hustlers,

I went to a strip club, and I remember this kind of image

of this girl kinda standing outside in the cold

with a big coat and a cigarette,

and I was like, well, there's Ramona right there,

which was my character in the movie, and I said,

when we were shooting the scene, I was like,

I wanna be in a big fur coat outside with a cigarette.

That is definitely the vibe for her, and we used that,

and it's actually one of my favorite scenes in the movie.

This is obviously the Super Bowl, another Versace moment.

They dressed me and all of the dancers in my set.

They sent me so many beautiful sketches.

I had an idea to kind of do a Peter Lindbergh-inspired look

for the girls, with the little motorcycle hats

and the leather and all of that,

and I told 'em I wanna do quick changes on stage.

I have only six, seven minutes,

but I wanna do three or four different outfits,

and they were like, what?

And I was like, yeah, and we accomplished it.

We did it, and it was amazing, so kudos to Versace.

Well, here's a nice little Chanel moment.

This was at the inauguration,

and we went for a very kind of classic, beautiful look.

I was very happy to be there.

I was very happy to be Latina

and representing Latinos in that moment.

This was a really proud moment for me and for my family.

They were kind of embracing everything that I wanted to do.

It was an amazing, amazing, beautiful moment.

This is Ralph Lauren. This was my wedding day.

We got married down in Savannah,

and I wanted it to kind of be traditionally Latin,

but also kind of Southern belle-ish at the same time.

If there's a mix of that,

they certainly accomplished it with this dress.

It was a beautiful dress.

It had a huge, long train that was so hard to walk in.

It was so heavy.

He made me three dresses for my wedding,

so I had one for the ceremony, one for the reception,

and one for a song that I was gonna sing at the reception,

and they were all very classic,

but very different and beautiful.

This is, I guess, my third Vogue cover.

I shot this with Annie Liebovitz, who I love working with,

who I find to be a genius.

She had a very specific, as she always does,

idea about what she wants to shoot

and how she wants you to be in the picture

and how she wants you to look,

and she really creates timeless, perfect images.

I mean, the attention to detail that she has

is really unmatched.

I've never met another photographer like that,

and I am always happy to be in front of her lens.

There was like a little box underneath me

that I could rest on because my arms would get tired,

but as I'm looking at this now,

I realize it was a real precursor

to the This is Me... Now experience with the red flower,

and this would be a perfect cover for right now.

It's funny how things like that happen.

The Golden Globes this year.

This was a Nicole and Felicia.

Again, entering my hearts and flowers era,

my hummingbird era.

We had hummingbirds on my ears and flowers here

and the pink cape that accompanied this dress.

It was perfectly, beautifully tailored

by my personal tailor, Anna, who is a genius.

We had a lot of options to wear for the Golden Globes,

but at the end of the day,

this one felt the most kind of stunning and red carpet.

This is from the other night at Saturday Night Live.

This was kind of a thrown-together outfit.

There was a little jacket, there was a little top,

there was these pants.

I just kinda liked them all together.

I started kind of mix and matching things.

Me and my stylist, Rob, we were just like,

had different ideas of what we wanted the outfit to be,

and then at the end of the day,

everything kind of felt a little busy

and kind of not like you could really rock with it,

and so we decided to go with a very kind of clean look.

I really love this.

It made me feel real comfortable.

I could kick and dance and do all the things

that I wanted to do,

and this was the other song I sang that night.

This is when I sang Can't Get Enough.

This is when I sang, This Is Me... Now.

Here we go.

This is one of the album covers for, This Is Me... Now.

Norman Jean Roy shot all the album covers.

His photos are very classic,

and that's what I wanted with this album.

When I think about it being kind of a 20-year project,

starting from This is Me... Then to This Is Me... Now

and how kind of timeless that other picture looks,

I wanted that to be, this is me right in this moment, now,

in the most classic kind of clean way.

This is Me... Then was a moment in time that was captured

that was inspired by falling in love at that time,

and I never expected

to be making a This Is Me... Now album.

When I got a second chance at that later on in my life,

20 years later, it just really made me inspired

to go back in and make music again.

I really feel like it was destiny.

[pen scratching]

Thank you so much, Vogue.

That was a nice trip down memory lane,

my fashion memory lane.

Bye!

[upbeat music]