In 2003, my metric for “cool clothes” was based almost entirely on Jamie Lee Curtis’s glow-up in Freaky Friday. And honestly? Over twenty years later, Curtis’s iconic, multicolor sheer dress—picked out by her teenage daughter, with whom she swapped bodies—is still the epitome of cool. Curtis will no doubt be serving some lewks in Freakier Friday—the sequel in theaters today—but nothing will ever top that dress.

Directed by Mark Waters, the 2003 Freaky Friday movie—which was already the third film adaptation of the 1972 novel of the same name by Mary Rodgers—is pure, nostalgic, early 00s fun. Both Curtis and Lohan deliver hilarious, spot-on performances as a stuffy, intellectual career woman, Tess (Curtis) and her punk-rock teen daughter, Anna(Lohan) who swap bodies and learn what it’s like to walk a mile in the others’ shoes. It’s a genuinely sweet, relatable mother-daughter story, anchored by the two main actors’ charisma. For me, though, what has made this film an enduring, memorable favorite is the impeccable costumes by designer Genevieve Tyrrel—in particular, the flowy, Stevie Nicks-esque dress Curtis wears for the majority of the film.

Shortly after the body swap, Anna—now in her mom’s body—decides to spruce up her mother’s look, courtesy of the platinum credit card she finds in her wallet. A classic ’00s make-over montage entails (I miss those!). Anna gets her mom a chic new haircut, stylish cartilage piercing, and killer high-heel suede boots.

The pièce de résistance is the shimmering, sheer, big-sleeved, low-cut dress, bursting with colors and patterns—reminiscent of animal print, but not quite. The cherry on top? A loud necklace with a bedazzled star pendant that feels like it should clash, but somehow instead ties the whole look together. As Tess (in Anna’s body) points out, she looks like Stevie Nicks, and it’s awesome.

In a 2021 interview with the Sick S.A.D Film Club podcast, Freaky Friday costume designer Genevieve Tyrrel revealed the dress is a chiffon dress by Belgian designer Diane Von Furstenberg, cut up and resewn together to fit Curtis’s needs.

“We bought eight or nine of them, so that we could take them apart to have all the patterns meet up, so that she could have multiples for the motorcycle riding, for the stunt double,” Tyrrel explained. “Basically, we bought dresses to use as fabric. That was an intense project.”

In other words, while you might be able to find a similar dress in a vintage Diane Von Furstenberg collection, Curtis’s dress for that movie was one of a kind. (And, in fact, it may not even be the exact same dress from scene to scene!)

It’s just as well, because as much as I might have idolized this look as the height of “coolness” at age 12—and, to be honest, still do—there’s no one else who could pull off like Curtis.

“There’s nobody else who’s a force of nature like that, who slays like a queen every time,” Tyrrel said in that same podcast interview. “She’s on her game every second, of every day. She’s a generous, amazing human. She’s one of my all-time faves to work with.”

In the new Freakier Friday movie, it’s Tess’s Gen-Z granddaughter who gets control of body, rather than her millennial daughter. So it makes sense that her fashion sense is more cutesy and K-pop-y; and less punk rock and witch-y.

Maybe it’s just because I’m no longer an impressionable pre-teen, but I can’t help but feel these new looks are a downgrade. They just don’t scream “cool” the way that original dress did. (Freakier Friday‘s costumes were helmed by designer Natalie O’Brien, not Tyrrel.)

But hey, I’ll always have Curtis’s 2003 Freaky Friday dress to aspire too. No one was, or is, doing like her.