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Loved Allie's JLo dress in Off Campus? Here's how it was made: ‘Mika Abdala was taped within an inch of her life’
The ‘jungle dress’, famously worn by JLo, was recreated for the Off Campus series. Costume designer Charlene details the process of fitting Mika Abdala in it.
Everyone's obsessed with Prime Video's latest college-set romantic drama, Off Campus. Based primarily on The Deal, the first book in Elle Kennedy's college hockey romance series, the first season follows Hannah Wells and Garrett Graham, played by Ella Bright and Belmont Cameli.
However, season one sneaks in a secondary couple that quickly stole viewers' hearts: Allie Hayes (Mika Abdalla) and ladies' man Dean Di Laurentis (Stephen Kalyn) from book number three of the Off Campus series. One of the highlights from the show is Allie wearing a recreation of Jennifer Lopez's iconic Versace ‘jungle dress’ from the 2000 Grammys.
The moment was such a hit that it even made it to JLo's timeline, as the multi-hyphenate reshared a clip from the show on X (formerly Twitter) saying, "Love this shooooww."
Mika Abdala was taped within an inch of her life to create JLo's iconic look
The Jungle dress is one of the most iconic ensembles in modern fashion history. On May 21, Charlene Akuamoah, the Off Campus costume designer, took to Instagram to reveal to fans how the look for the show was created. Sharing several behind-the-scenes pictures, she wrote, “Can we talk about THE dress? I can’t even count the amount of questions I’ve gotten on this dress so let’s chat.”
According to Charlene, to design the Jungle dress-inspired gown, she had to ‘scour the earth to find fabric that was as similar as possible to the original.’ However, things did not materialise for them once the fabric arrived. She confessed, “Once it arrived, we realised the colour was off. So the entire roll of fabric had to be sprayed to get the perfect shade of green.”
Once the fabric was sprayed the right shade, Charlene's sewer stitched it together to create an exact silhouette that exactly matched JLo's dress. The costume designer revealed that they even made a backup dress in case something happened to the original.
“We had a million fittings for this to make sure it fit just right, and on the day, made sure Mika Abdalla was taped within an inch of her life so she could change all of our lives,” she added.
The Jungle dress
For the uninitiated, the green Versace silk chiffon dress, designed by Donatella Versace and worn by Jennifer Lopez at the 42nd Grammy Awards ceremony, is iconic for several reasons.
For starters, it directly inspired the creation of Google Images. After Lopez wore her iconic green Versace dress to the Grammys, millions of people searched online to see her photos, but Google could only return text links at the time. The massive demand to visually see that moment revealed a gap in search technology, leading to Google Images.
The singer even gave the gown a second lap in 2019, closing Versace’s spring 2020 runway show in Milan in an updated version that showed even more skin than the original.
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