If Google had existed on the July night in 1994 when Liz Hurley wore her safety-pin dress to the Four Weddings and a Funeral premiere in Leicester Square,
there’s a good chance that she, not J-Lo, would have been responsible for the creation of “the image search”.
As it stood, “her arrival in ‘that’ Versace dress has the same kind of significance in tabloid folklore that the nativity does to Christians:
the moment at which a star was born”, British Vogue wrote in a ’90s profile – with The Dress effectively launching the then 28 year old’s career.
It would lead, indirectly, to Hurley being named the face of Estée Lauder – her first modelling gig, and a deal as significant as Lauren Hutton’s industry-shifting 1973 contract with Revlon. “In the Nineties, what advertisers need is someone who can project a broad range of emotions, from sultry to very innocent, very warm to touchable,” the company’s then US president explained at a press conference. “[Elizabeth] is a real person, someone you would like as your best friend.” The cool £2 million contract would see her face printed in magazines and pasted on billboards in more than 100 countries – and make her, along with her long-time partner Hugh Grant, a source of endless fascination. By 1998, American Vogue name-checked the couple, along with Oasis and the Spice Girls, as “England’s biggest exports” – and based on this year’s Golden Globes, her allure has yet to wane.
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1994
Hurley famously wore The Dress, as it came to be known, to the Four Weddings and a Funeral premiere because Versace was the only house then willing to loan her a look. When she covered Tatler’s October 1994 issue a few months later, she admitted to being baffled by its impact: “Since I was 14, my mother has always said, ‘You’re not going out in that. I wash my hands of you.’ Only in England could a saucy dress have such an astounding effect.”
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1995
After Hurley landed her Estée Lauder contract in 1995, American Vogue ran a profile of “the face that launched a thousand lipsticks”. “At 29, a (so far) emerging actress who’s done movies, theatre, and TV, she’s the only woman in England who can knock the Princess of Wales, the hitherto number-one pin-up, off the front page,” wrote journalist Vicki Woods.
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1995
Hurley accompanied Grant to the 1995 Golden Globes, where he won Best Actor – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy for Four Weddings. Liz wore what WWD described as a “perfectly fitting Chanel gown” for the occasion. (“I’ll wear anything that’s not nailed down,” she told the publication.) As for Hugh: “This jacket was my grandfather’s,” he said, “and I borrowed these pants off a chap at Oxford in 1981, and he’s still waiting to get them back.”
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1995
Every so often, Hurley would cheat on Gianni Versace with Tom Ford, whose sensual aesthetic at Gucci suited her to a tee. Here, she wears an autumn/winter 1995 peacoat originally modelled by Amber Valletta to the premiere of American President – looking every inch the embodiment of Ford’s “’70s-tinged”, “super-glam” woman, as American Vogue put it.
