| Red Tarvydas dress of Rebecca Twigley | |
| Type: | Red Tarvydas dress |
| Artist: | Ruth Tarvydas |
| Italic Title: | no |
The red Tarvydas dress of Rebecca Twigley was a revealing dress worn by Australian model Rebecca Twigley (who assumed the married name Rebecca Judd in 2010), to the 2004 Brownlow Medal ceremony on 20 September 2004 at the Crown Casino and Entertainment Complex in Melbourne, Australia. The custom-made dress was designed by Ruth Tarvydas and was valued at A$2,000.[1]
Although Twigley's then boyfriend and future husband, Chris Judd, won the Brownlow Medal at that ceremony, much of the media attention focused on Twigley's dress.[2] Twigley received more hits on Australian news website news.com.au than did the crowning of Miss Universe 2004, Jennifer Hawkins, surpassing all previous records for a single news day.[3]
Australian Football League CEO Andrew Demetriou described Twigley as one of the 20 highlights of the 2004 AFL season. Speaking about the dress, Twigley said: "I really didn't think it would grab that much attention, but I got hounded on the red carpet. Everyone wanted an interview and pictures."
Radio presenter Jon Faine criticised Twigley's choice of fashion, saying that: "A lot of effort has gone in this season by football codes... to try to stop footballers looking at women as objects as nothing other than sexual desire or bits of meat and flesh... It's kind of like they are undoing all the work that was done earlier in the season." Faine's colleague Virginia Trioli disagreed, saying that "They are powerful, individual, attractive, strong women who want to look nice."[4]
Twigley donated the dress to national children's charity TLC for Kids. The dress was auctioned off in October 2004, going for A$23,000.[5] TLC later rejected the winning bid when it discovered the buyer had links to adult dating agency RedHotPie. The charity then offered the underbidders the dress, but later changed their mind because they could not guarantee media coverage for the purchaser. The dress was returned to Twigley, who donated it to Chris Judd's then football club, the West Coast Eagles.[6]
Following Tarvydas's death in 2014, Rebecca Judd acknowledged the dress in her tribute to the designer on Twitter, saying "You changed my life with your red dress Ruth. RIP beautiful lady x".[7] The dress was the final gown in the Tarvydas tribute show at the Perth Fashion Festival.[8]
Even in the 2020s, the media still refers to the dress as "that dress".[9] [10] [11] In an article entitled "Brownlow: The show stopping and jaw dropping fashion moments" and published in 2020, Jackie Epstein of the Herald Sun described the wearing of the "... barely there red dress that got the nation talking and kickstarted a career ..." as "... [p]erhaps the Brownlow’s most iconic moment." Epstein also claimed that by wearing the dress, "Rebecca Twigley who became Rebecca Judd etched her name into the world forever."[12]
A different opinion was expressed by radio personality Bridget Hustwaite in an article in The Age in 2023. Hustwaite, who had recently begun a relationship with professional footballer Oscar McDonald, was lamenting the tendency of her acquaintances and colleagues, upon being told about the new "someone", to ask "Oh, so you're a WAG now?" After noting that the expression WAG, as an acronym for "wives and girlfriends" of footballers, had originated in England in the early to mid-2000s, she commented, "Locally, it was the reporting of Bec Judd’s 2004 Brownlow Medal dress that promoted WAG into the Australian vocabulary and was consequently embraced by trolls who used it to objectify women."[13]