Poet Aurielle Marie Wears Lizzo's 2019 AMAs Gown to Out100 Gala: 'I'm the Most Fabulously Dressed Person'
Author Aurielle Marie is looking "Good as Hell," thanks to Lizzo.
When Marie, who won the Georgia Author of the Year in poetry for her book Gumbo Ya Ya, found out she was invited to the Out100 Gala, she was ecstatic.
But she quickly began to worry about what she'd wear to the big event, which celebrates the honorees on the Out100 list, Out Magazine's prestigious compilation of the year's most impactful and influential LGBTQ+ people.
"I'm a chronic over-dresser. I want to wear something amazing. I don't know what I'm gonna do, and I do not have a dress," Marie revealed in an exclusive interview with PEOPLE on the Out100 carpet.
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After looking for two weeks and not finding anything to wear, she thought about skipping the event. "I was like, 'I don't think I'm gonna go, y'all.' Someone asked me, 'Well, how do you want to feel?'" the author said. "I want to look and feel like how Lizzo did, walking up to accept her Emmy at the 2022 Emmys in that voluptuous, sexy, amazing masterpiece of a dress."
Marie decided to ask Lizzo herself. "She has no idea who I am," she recalls thinking. "She's probably gonna say no, but if she says no, you're in the exact same position that you're in right now — no dress, no fabulous moment, maybe not going to Out100," Marie said.
But the writer went for it. "So, I asked!" she said. "I didn't think she would even see it, let alone see it and care, let alone see it, care and say yes. She did, and I am now — I can confidently say — the most fabulously dressed person at the Out100, thanks to Lizzo."
The "Turth Hurts" singer, 34, surprised Marie with the pink dress she wore at the 2019 American Music Awards.
Marie, whose book also won the Cave Canem prize and the Lambda Literary Award for Bisexual Poetry, revealed that the dress fit perfectly.
Jeff Kravitz/AMA2019/FilmMagic for dcp, Aurielle Marie
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"It fit like a glove," she told PEOPLE. "The only thing that we had to work on was the zipper, because she performed her ass off at the 2019 AMAs, which is where this dress is from, and so we had to get the zipper worked on."
Just last month, Lizzo, 34, opened up about her clothes and costumes that she wears on stage for her concerts.
In a recent cover story with Vanity Fair, the 34-year-old singer-songwriter said her skimpy ensembles on stage are a reflection of feminism and empowerment.
"When it's sexual, it's mine," Lizzo said. "When it's sexualized, someone is doing it to me or taking it from me. Black women are hypersexualized all the time, and masculinized simultaneously. Because of the structure of racism, if you're thinner and lighter, or your features are narrow, you're closer to being a woman," she noted.
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The singer pointed out Beyoncé's impact on her onstage costumes and said her famous black leotard in the 2008 "Single Ladies" music video is what inspired her to start wearing similar costumes in 2014.
"It seemed like it became the industry standard for everyone," the "2 Be Loved (Am I Ready)" singer shared. "I wanted to be like a dancer and also, it was kind of political and feminist in my eyes to have me, a full-figured dancer, wearing leotards, showing and celebrating curves and being Olympian in strength, endurance, and flexibility."
