Britney Spears On Matching Denim with Justin Timberlake: 'I Thought It Was a Joke'

In her new memoir The Woman in Me, per People, the singer admitted that she thinks the outfits she and then-boyfriend Timberlake wore to the 2001 American Music Awards were "tacky."

Spears opened up about the outfits, where she said they were partially inspired by her Southern roots, where "moms love to round up the kids and say, 'Listen, we're going to church today, so we're all going to color-coordinate.'"

"We should match! Let's do denim-on-denim!" said Spears when she learned that Justin was going to be wearing a denim look to the AMAs, but noted that she wasn't necessarily serious about her comment.

"At first, honestly, I thought it was a joke," she said. "I didn't think my stylist was going to do it, and I never thought Justin was going to do it with me. But they both went all in."

"When he put it on, I thought, 'Whoa! I guess we're really doing this!'" recalled Spears of Timberlake's Canadian tuxedo, assembled by his stylist Steven Gerstein.

This isn't the first time the couple had coordinated their outfits, "but with the matching denim, we blew it up," said Spears, who also shared that the outfit was less than comfortable.

"My corset had me sucked in so tight under my denim gown, I was about to fall over."

Overall, Britney is fond of the look, despite some criticism it may have faced.

"I get that it was tacky — but it was also pretty great in its own way, and I'm also happy to see it parodied as a Halloween costume," she shared.

"I've heard Justin get flak for the look," she said. "On one podcast where they were teasing him about it, he said, 'You do a lot of things when you're young and in love.'"

"And that's exactly right. We were giddy, and those outfits reflected that," she concluded.