The Mystery of the Missing Versace Dress Jennifer Garner Famously Wore In ‘13 Going on 30’ Is Fascinating—and Somehow Involves ‘Sex and the City’

Many moments stick with us from the classic 13 Going on 30—which turned 20 years old on April 23—but one of the standouts? When the character Jenna Rink (played by Jennifer Garner) dances to “Thriller” in one of the coming-of-age movie’s most beloved scenes. The striped Versace minidress Garner wears in it has become “one of the most recreated Halloween costumes and sought-after looks in movie history,” People reports—but if you’re looking for the original Versace dress itself that Garner wore in 2004 to end up in a museum somewhere, you’re out of luck: it has been lost forever, the film’s costume designer Susie DeSanto said.

“The dress really wasn’t premeditated,” DeSanto told People, adding that she and her team were in a hurry to pick the look for that scene, so they just grabbed the Versace dress and went for it. If you haven’t seen the movie, first, please, go fix that as soon as possible—and, for context, know that the dress was important because “It’s Jenna’s first big party as a 30-year-old magazine editor after transporting from her 13-year-old life,” People writes, and, therefore, DeSanto “needed something that felt fun enough for a teen, but rich enough for an adult paycheck,” the outlet added. Check and check.

“Culture took the dress and went with it,” she said of how the Versace look has grown in popularity over the past two decades. “The reason I think people fall in love with it is because of Jen. I think anybody else in that role, it would’ve just been a cute movie, but I think right then she was the exact right person with right energy and ability to tap into her youthfulness.”

Neither Garner nor DeSanto held onto the dress after the movie wrapped, and DeSanto said she isn’t quite sure why. She told People that oftentimes costume pieces end up in warehouses where they’re reused, but this time “this dress seemingly vanished somewhere along the way,” People writes.

Garner herself has said a few times over the years how she wished she’d kept the dress, even noting that after she saw “her” dress worn in a 2003 episode of Sex and the City by a background actor that she found herself thinking “Get out of my dress! Give me my dress back! I want that dress!” she said on an episode of The View. She told Glamour of the Versace look “Susie and I can’t believe how much this dress keeps coming up, and how on Halloween every year there are more Jenna Rinks than fewer,” Garner said. She also addressed the Sex and the City cameo, telling the outlet “You will see it show up on a background player kind of scooting into a theater seat, and it just was, you know, a dress pulled out and put on a background player and then who knows where it ended up?” she said. “But sadly, I don’t have it.”  

Sure enough, the dress is worn by a theatergoer as Carrie Bradshaw (played by Sarah Jessica Parker) and her friends attend Samantha Jones’ boyfriend Smith Jerrod’s play. (Samantha is played by Kim Cattrall, and Smith by Jason Lewis.)

Of the Sex and the City cameo, DeSanto isn’t convinced that was the same dress. “I have a theory about that,” she said. “We were based in Los Angeles. There weren’t many of those Versace dresses to begin with. It was a very limited run, so I think somebody found that dress in a consignment store in New York [for Sex and the City]. I don’t think it was Jen’s dress. Her dress went into a warehouse, and I sadly think it’s in a landfill somewhere. Who knows where it is?” 

She said she assumed that, if the dress was still out there somewhere, it would have been found by now—if for no other reason than collectors would probably have tracked it down to make a buck off of it. “Unfortunately, no one seems to know where it is,” People writes. “Not even Versace has gotten the dress back. The fashion house did, however, recreate the iconic piece for Ariana Grande, who wore it on an episode of The Voice in 2021.”

Garner reached out to Grande to tell her how “beautiful” she looked as the modern day Jenna Rink: “It’s impossible to even tell you how warm and fuzzy it makes me to see that Jenna Rink still has a life,” Garner said.

Two decades on, DeSanto said that, beyond the Versace look, there were plenty of other designer pieces on hand: she worked with a set decorator on 30-year-old Jenna’s closet and decked it out with loaned Fendi bags, including “all of the up-to-the-minute Baguette bags,” DeSanto said. In 2004—the year 13 Going on 30 was released—Marc Jacobs, Miu Miu, Nanette Lepore, and other designers of the moment teamed with DeSanto for looks for magazine editor Jenna to wear. But the look of the film remains that Versace dress, a dress that “doesn’t even know how popular it became,” DeSanto joked. “It’s just gone.”

Of the film itself, “I think the message of the movie is a really strong, clear message to people about being yourself, believing in yourself, and doing things that feel comfortable and being who you are and all that kind of stuff,” DeSanto said. Garner added “It’s so sweet that it’s such a comfort movie for so many people. It makes me so happy.”