Britney Spears 1998 Britney Spears Baby One More Time Outfit

Function of an ongoing series of 29Secrets stories, taking a deep swoop into the history of legendary beauty products and iconic fashion moments…

By Christopher Turner
Analogy by Michael Hak

"…Baby Ane More Time" didn't just launch Britney Spears' pop career – information technology kicked off the unstoppable teen pop boom of the tardily '90s, clearing the way for an ground forces of imitators and boy bands to dominate popular culture. The striking song is incredibly catchy with Spears' at present signature throaty vocals…but one of the reasons the song, and the singer, garnered so much attending at the time was because of the music video: specifically, the schoolgirl uniform, complete with thigh-highs, tied-upwards blouse and pinkish feathered pilus accessories. The iconic costume not only invited controversy only instantly cemented Spears' status as a pop miracle. Non bad for a small-town Louisiana teen making her outset record.

Now that it's been over 20 years (!) since the vocal'south debut, and given the recent fight over Spears' "conservatorship," this may be a good time to await at the story backside her iconic "…Babe One More Time" schoolgirl outfit.

A lucky coincidence
Swedish producer-songwriter Max Martin originally wrote a song called "Hit Me Infant (1 More Time)," intended for TLC or the Backstreet Boys; even so, both groups ultimately rejected the vocal when it was submitted to them. British boy ring 5 likewise passed on the song before information technology ended up in May 1998 with then-xvi-year-sometime Britney Spears, who had recently signed a record bargain with Jive Records. Spears heard the demo for the song, admittedly loved it and wanted to record it, but Jive Records felt uncomfortable well-nigh the proposition of abuse and removed "Hit Me" from the title. (Ironically, Martin thought "hit" was American slang for "call.") And so the song about the heartache of a recent breakdown turned to a delinquent hitting on the charts, with the public perhaps a bit confused about the meaning but none the wiser.

Spears told Rolling Stone in 2000 that she spent the night before the recording session for the song listening to Soft Cell's "Tainted Love" ("What a sexy song"), her model for the vibe she was going for. "I wanted my vocalisation to be kind of rusty," Spears said. "I wanted my voice to just be able to groove with the runway. Then the night earlier, I stayed upwards really, really late, so when I went into the studio, I wasn't rested. When I sang it, I was just laid back and mellow – it sounds cool, though. Yous know, how it sounds actually depression in the lower register – it sounds really sexy. So I kept telling myself, 'Britney, don't get whatever rest.'"

"…Infant One More Time" was released as Spears' debut single on October 23, 1998. On November 21, 1998, it debuted on the Billboard Hot 100 at number 17, and 2 and a half months afterward information technology topped the chart for ii consecutive weeks.

The vision for the video
The music video was directed past Nigel Dick, who had just come up off of directing the videos for "Backstreet's Dorsum" and "I Want Information technology That Mode" for the Backstreet Boys. Originally, Dick had proposed a video with Spears in outer space where she lands on Mars and then breaks into a dance routine. [Editor's note: Yous may recognize this equally the exact aforementioned video treatment for Spears' "Oops! …I Did It Over again," which Dick after directed in 2000.] Spears saw the treatment for the video and said, "This is horrible. No way am I doing this. This is actually cheesy. Let me get on the telephone with Nigel Dick."

Spears' idea? She wanted to be in a high school with a agglomeration of cute boys and do a little dancing. Dick was hesitant, merely ultimately revamped the plan for the video. In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Dick explained that initially he had been unsure of taking Spears' advice.

"Your initial reaction to this is, I'one thousand being told past a 16-twelvemonth-one-time girl what I should do.… [But] this girl is 16 and I'm a grown man; perhaps she has a meliorate perspective on her audience than I do. So I swallowed my pride," Dick said.

Production for the "…Babe One More Time" video took identify in Los Angeles on August 7 and viii, 1998, although information technology didn't premiere on MTV until November 26 of that year. It was shot entirely at Venice Loftier School, located at 13000 Venice Blvd. in the L.A. neighbourhood of Mar Vista, the same schoolhouse used to shoot the 1978 film Grease.

"Her idea was the whole Grease thing, dancing in the hallway," explained Barry Weiss, president of Jive Records. "She gave the kernel of the idea to Nigel, and he came upwards with the rest."

And and so…that outfit
The opening scene of "…Babe Ane More Time" features a bored Britney in her pigtails with pink pom-poms, sitting in a classroom with her assistant Felicia Culotta playing the role of teacher. She fiddles with her pencil until the bell rings, the offset chords thump and she coos, "Ooh baby, baby." Nosotros then get our first look at the total schoolgirl outfit: a white shirt tied up to betrayal her midriff, a gray cardigan, a super-brusk skirt and a pair of thigh-highs.

As it turns out, the infamous outfit was also Spears' thought. Recalling events to MTV News, Dick said he had causeless she would habiliment a T-shirt and jeans until, at a fitting for the video, Spears said: "Wouldn't I wear a schoolgirl outfit?" They promptly bought the outfit from a local Kmart department shop. "Not one piece of clothing in the video cost more than $17," Dick told the station.

"The outfits looked kind of dorky, so I was similar, 'Permit's tie upwardly our shirts, and exist cute,'" Spears told People back in 2000. "It was about being a girl and knowing about fashion."

Of course, parents' groups were outraged and declared the sexy schoolgirl outfit calculatedly "Lolita-esque." Only interviews with Spears pointed less to deliberate innocence and more to bodily innocence: "I was like, 'I want something all kids my age, you lot know, a lot of kids can relate to," she told MTV Radio Network. "You know, being in school, they're bored, they want to get out of school. Then we leave, and then there's a lot of dancing. It's but a fun video."

The schoolgirl outfit caused a lot of controversy. Specifically, it was the fact that Spears had tied up the lesser half of her shirt and exposed her umbilicus and abs. "Me showing my belly? I'chiliad from the South; y'all're stupid if you lot don't clothing a sports bra [when yous] become to trip the light fantastic class – you're going to be sweating your barrel off."

Regardless of Spears' decisions, Dick received a "huge amount of grief" when the music video came out, because people idea she was existence exploited. In fact, ever since the video hit the air, the court of public opinion has debated whether Spears knew she was sexualizing herself and did it on purpose, or whether she simply idea it was a cool wait.

Regardless, the "…Babe One More than Time" schoolgirl outfit is considered one of Britney Spears' nearly iconic looks, and today information technology can be found in a glass brandish box at the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada. If you tin't make your mode to Vegas, don't worry…yous're sure to see countless fans using the video as inspiration and dressing upwards as schoolgirl Britney Spears every year on Halloween.

In October 2019, Spears reflected on the song turning twenty, maxim, "It's hard to put into words what today means to me.… Xx years ago, the world heard my music for the very first fourth dimension!" People are still listening and singing along faithfully today. It remains ane of her most pop songs.

And, in case y'all were wondering, she sings the word "babe" 25 times in the song.

Want more than? You can read other stories from ourTHE STORY OF series right here.

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Source: https://29secrets.com/style/the-story-of-britney-spears-baby-one-more-time-schoolgirl-outfit/

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