“I’ve always been a secret fashion designer.” Watch Ginger Spice reveal the story behind her most infamous look.
, née Halliwell—stepped onto the stage wearing an unforgettable piece: her Union Jack dress. The costume went on to make headlines across the globe, becoming a symbol for girl power and unity along the way.
“I had no idea the reaction that was going to come,” Horner says. But do you know the exact story behind the look? For a newHorner remembers that year’s Brit Awards as an exciting time for the group. They had just released their debut album,, the year before. “It felt like everything we had worked for led up to that moment,” she says, adding that she wanted to choose a performance look to reflect this vibrant feeling. “I remember this little black Gucci dress got presented to me. It was almost like a 1950s, Marilyn-shape swimming costume. Tom Ford was working with Gucci at that time,” Horner says. Unconvinced the dress was special enough, however, she then had an aha moment: “I remember thinking, It’s the Brits—British flag!” To make her design come to life—“I’ve always been a secret fashion designer,” she joked—Horner had to get creative. “I don’t know if this is true, but you’re not meant to cut up a flag,” she said. “So I found a tea towel. My sister did it, because she’s better at sewing than I am.” On the back, they also sewed on a giant peace sign, to combat a concern that Horner’s stylist had at the time. “I remember showing [the dress] to a stylist and she said to me, ‘You can’t wear that—it’s National Front,’ an extreme party that existed in Britain that was very racist,” Horner says. “I said, ‘No, stop—we celebrate all cultures.’ And that’s why I put the peace sign on the back.” Horner also added custom go-go boots. “My father’s a mechanic, and I had car spray from the garage and sprayed it red to match,” she says. “The length of the dress is the sexuality, and the big bobber boots are saying, ‘You’re not going to mess with me.’” The following day, Horner remembers the dress causing a total frenzy. “I woke up the next morning, and that picture of me in the dress was on the front page of every newspaper,” she says. “That dress really became the identity of what girl power stood for. People would wear their own version of it. Suddenly you started seeing the British flag on a lot of fashion.”The dress lived on well after Horner left the Spice Girls in 1998. When Horner and the girls reunited for the 2007 Spice Girls comeback tour, designer Roberto Cavalli, who created their tour costumes, revived the Union Jack dress in a special new way. “We really needed to turn the volume up on it, and Cavalli did that with crystals,” Horner says, recalling that she also saw many fans in the audience during tour wearing their own custom versions. “Every country that we went to, we’d see girls, and guys, in the Union Jack dress. It was almost like a uniform unifying us all.” Last year, Horner got back together with the Spice Girls once again for a slew of reunion performances. But as a newly married woman—she wed Christian Horner, the team principal of the Red Bull Racing Formula One team in 2015—she felt like wearing a new, grown-up version of it: a floor-length Union Jack gown. “I felt a sense of power to developing the dress into something different, even more timeless,” she says. “To me, it shows the evolution of being a woman. As you grow older, you suddenly feel confident to cover up.”
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