Spice Girls member, Ginger Spice, Geri Halliwell-Horner has told the story about her famous Union Jack dress from the 1997 Brit Awards. The 51-year-old star sat down with Jimmy Fallon on his hit show, The Tonight Show, and explained how the dress, now a staple in pop culture fashion, came to be. 

She said: “I always like making things [and] they gave us different clothes from different [eras]. That was a Gucci dress; it was like a Marilyn Monroe ’50s-shape black swimming costume. “Like Americans – you always celebrate your country, I was thinking, ‘It’s the BRITs, I should put a flag on it.’ And the only flag I found was a tea towel, so I cut out a tea towel and sewed it on the Gucci dress.”  

The girl group, who performed the smash hits “Wannabe” and “Who Do You Think You Are” at the award show, certainly had a reason to celebrate. The band won British Single of the Year and British Video of the Year at the 1997 ceremony.  

Watch the performance, below.

Horner also spoke about how she missed the first rounds of the auditions for Spice Girls. She said: “It wasn’t really the Spice Girls at that moment, just some people auditioning for a girl band, but I did miss it. I was up a mountain and I had burnt my face… Somehow, I kept the advert on my mirror and – a few months later – I thought, ‘Hmmm, I wonder if that’s still going.’ So, I ran them up and they said come on.” 

Earlier this year, the girl group released a never-seen-before alternative music video of their 90s classic “Smash” to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the third single from their classic album, Spiceworld. The album was a smashing success for the band and has since gone on to sell over one million copies in the UK and over four million in the US. Worldwide, the album has sold over 14 million copies. It has since become one of the best-selling albums of all time.  

Fans of the band have also been teased with more exciting news. Mel B, known as Scary Spice, told The Sun that the pop group have an announcement on the way. She said: “We are planning on releasing a statement. What that is, I can’t say right now because we’re just finishing off perfecting what we’re going to be doing together, all five of us, but it’s going to be something that the fans are really going to love.”