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Britney Spears’ three-year relationship with Justin Timberlake is a hot topic in her memoir “The Woman in Me.”
One of their most memorable red carpets was when they wore matching denim looks to the 2001 American Music Awards.
At the star-studded event, Spears wore a denim dress, while Justin sported jeans, a denim blazer, and a denim hat.
Spears looks back on the epic fashion statement, writing, “I get that it was tacky — but it was also pretty great in its own way, and I’m also happy to see it parodied as a Halloween costume.”
Justin has gotten “flak” over the years for his denim outfit. She writes, “On one podcast where they were teasing him about it, he said, ‘You do a lot of things when you’re young and in love.’ And that’s exactly right. We were giddy, and those outfits reflected that.”
Spears came up with the idea for the coordinated looks after she learned that he was going to wear denim. She told him, “We should match! Let’s do denim-on-denim!”
She goes on, “When he put it on, I thought, ‘Whoa! I guess we’re really doing this!'”
While they had coordinated their outfits before, Spears notes, “But with the matching denim, we blew it up.”
Spears had jaws dropping on the red carpet, but her dress was not comfortable to wear. She explains, “My corset had me sucked in so tight under my denim gown, I was about to fall over.”
Stylist Steven Gerstein came up with Justin’s look.
In 2020, Gerstein opened up about the look, telling Jezebel, “We wound up taking the Costume National suit that Justin wore for the ‘Celebrity’ album cover. We remade it in denim. Conversations with Levi’s were happening at the same time, and Britney was working with Kurt and Bart. We had some crossover contacts at Levi’s, so it went from being an idea to it being made within days.”
“It was kind of like their prom,” Gerstein continued. “They had an idea, and we did what they wanted as opposed to the other way around. The rest is history.”
While the AMAs was a sweet moment in their relationship, Spears also discusses some tough times with Timberlake in the memoir, including the bombshell confession that she had an abortion during their relationship.
Of the unplanned pregnancy, she writs, “It was a surprise, but for me, it wasn’t a tragedy. I loved Justin so much. I always expected us to have a family together one day. This would just be much earlier than I’d anticipated.”
Along with writing that Timberlake “definitely wasn’t happy about the pregnancy,” she adds, “He said we weren’t ready to have a baby in our lives, that we were way too young.”
In the book, Spears also admits to cheating on Justin with choreographer Wade Robson.
Timberlake has not commented on Spears’ memoir.
Britney also gets candid about other darkest times, like her headline-making breakdown in 2008 when she was placed on a psychiatric hold after locking herself in the bathroom with son Jayden.