Designer Reveals Why He Was ‘Nervous’ to Lend Sydney Sweeney Angelina Jolie’s 2004 Oscars Dress

The man who designed Angelina Jolie’s iconic 2004 Oscars dress admits he was nervous to see Sydney Sweeney repurpose it 20 years later —  and he “breathed a sigh of relief” when she pulled it off.

“I was concerned because that dress is so iconic and it had so much great press written about it,” designer Marc Bouwer told the Daily Mail on Saturday, November 29. “I didn’t want to destroy or taint that legacy of what we had created.”

Jolie, 50, wore the white satin Marilyn Monroe-style gown with a plunging neckline to the Academy Awards in 2004, 20 years before Sweeney, 28, rocked it at the 2024 Vanity Fair Oscar Party.

The dress, Bouwer told the Daily Mail, “was a total image-changing look” for Jolie.

“She had been known as the wild child of Hollywood, carrying the blood vial around her neck, stuff like that,”  Bouwer told the outlet, referring to when Jolie and her then-husband Billy Bob Thornton wore necklaces containing droplets of each other’s blood.

“And all of a sudden she was perceived as a humanitarian. She was this angelic, beautiful woman on this red carpet,” Bouwer added. “It totally shifted her whole image and I think that’s why it has become so iconic.”

That explains why Bouwer was initially jittery about the Anyone But You star re-wearing his creation — until he saw her in it.

“I was nervous,” he told the Daily Mail. “But when I saw how beautiful she looked … She looked different [than Jolie] but she still had that old Hollywood glamorous vibe that I love so much. It really took my breath away. I breathed a sigh of relief, like, ‘Yes, we did it, this is good.’”

“[I liked that] she wasn’t trying to emulate Angelina in her look,” Bouwer added. “They each had their own vibe and own persona.”