Britney Spears hasn’t a released an album since 2016’s Glory, but her presence was felt everywhere at the 40th annual MTV Video Music Awards on Wednesday night.
From the red carpet to the stage, a number of young pop stars paid homage to the Princess of Pop. Tate McRae—who counts Spears as a major influence, and whose dance moves are often compared to hers—wore a see-through lace minidress that referenced Spears’s famous Dolce & Gabbana number from the 2001 ceremony. McRae even wore her hair in cascading waves like Spears did two decades prior.
Addison Rae, who often expresses her love for the pop icon, wore a white satin bra-and-panty set with a voluminous tutu by designer Claire Sullivan, which brought to mind the bridal number Spears wore onstage at the VMAs with Madonna and Christina Aguilera for their infamous performance in 2003 (which of course also referenced Madonna’s 1984 VMAs debut, as well). Her rendition of a Spears look was the least literal, which felt smart at a time when there’s so much reference fatigue within celebrity fashion.
The odes to Spears didn’t stop there. Sabrina Carpenter kicked off a performance of her smash summer hits by sitting on a sparkling ceiling swing that brought to mind Spears’s “Lucky” music video. She also included a snippet of the famous monologue from Spears’s “Oops! … I Did It Again” in the show, and danced with an army of fawning astronauts similar to the ones in the song’s video.
Even the host for the evening, Megan Thee Stallion, brought out her Britney best. She appeared in a replica of the “I’m a Slave 4 U” costume from Spears’s 2001 VMAs performance, one of the most memorable of her entire career.
Now, it’s possible that because it was the 40th anniversary of the event, guests felt extra inspired to reference their favorite pop stars. But it still says something that Spears seemed to have more influence than anyone else on the younger generation’s fashion choices last night. At the height of her career, Britney was often found on worst-dressed lists, dragged for being too revealing or too sexy or even too Southern. But the outfits she wore then—the graphic tees, the lingerie-inspired minidresses, the sparkly stilettos—are considered vintage perfection today, not just because she wore them, but also because they shifted the way we think about pop-star style.
Her looks have become synonymous with the VMAs over the years, maybe because it was the one award show that gave her the respect she deserved. She attended the Grammy Awards just a handful of times and took home only one throughout her whole career (in 2005, for Best Dance Recording, for “Toxic”). But the VMAs? That was Spears’s domain. And her appearances through the years had an impact on the next generation, which came of age loving experimentation and refusing to take getting dressed quite so seriously.
Sometimes, the biggest creative forces are people who never sought to be influential and remain unbothered by it to this day. After the new-guard pop girls posed on the VMAs carpet last night with their love for Britney on full display, the star posted a video on Instagram. As she often does, she was dancing alone in a sparkly minidress in her living room. She didn’t need to be at the party; it was like she was already there.
