Lively also thanked Spears in the credits.
Britney Spears’ influence on pop culture goes on and on.
On Tuesday, actress Blake Lively rocked a vintage Versace dress that the icon herself wore in 2002 to a Versace fashion show, which designer Donatella Versace herself once commemorated on social media.
“It is Britney’s actual dress,” Lively told PEOPLE at the film’s red carpet premiere in New York City. “It should be in the Smithsonian or the Met. But it’s on me. I feel so lucky!”
(No word on whether that was a reference to Spears’ 2000 song “Lucky,” which Halsey covered this summer.)
On the same red carpet, Lively explained some of the meaning behind the garment, which she’s held on to for close to a year, she told Extra.
“This dress meant so much to me because of what she meant to me,” Lively said. “Like, she was just somebody who represented, like, love and beauty and youth and hard work and determination and strength, and she was in touch with her 𝓈ℯ𝓍uality and her delicacy and she just sort of represented it all.”
Lively also thanked Spears in the actual credits to her latest film, because Spears’ haunting 2003 song “Everytime” appears in it.
The film is an adaptation of author Colleen Hoover’s popular 2016 novel It Ends With Us. Her character, Lily, has overcome a childhood with an abusive father only to find herself in a toxic romance. Then a former flame, Atlas (Brandon Sklenar), reappears in her life.
The romance arrives in theaters Friday, Aug. 9.