Hustlers Strip Club Fashion

Jennifer Lopez struts onto the main stage of a cavernous strip club in “Hustlers” to the blaring tune of Fiona Apple’s late ‘90s anthem “Criminal”—the first line of which, “I’ve been a bad, bad girl,” suggests the knowing, playful tease to come.

Lusty men in musty suits immediately begin throwing money at her legendary derriere—not Lopez’s, exactly, but that of the veteran exotic dancer she portrays, the impeccably preserved Ramona. Still, it’s hard to discern completely between Lopez the superstar and the larger-than-life character she plays in “Hustlers,” and that’s part of the pleasure of watching this career-best performance from the multi-talented multi-hyphenate. We know this figure—we see the swagger, the magnetism, the incandescent ability to work an audience. Jennifer Lopez repurposed and repackaged all her well-honed skills here as a reminder that she is naturally gifted actress before she was known as JLo.

JLo Furs

JLO Lynx Coat Constance Wu Hustlers Strip Club

JLo’s gift for fashion is apparent in the film. She is gifting the most beautiful lynx coat to her friend Constance Wu. Jennifer wore many furs in the movie, but she sports this beautiful Golden Island Fox Coat on our power move. She shows who the boss is during a segment of this film.

JLO Jennifer Lopez Golden Island Fox Coat

History of Hustlers Movie

On June 11, 2014, four women and one man indicted for allegedly drugging men and charging thousands of dollars on their credit cards at New York City clubs. Five years later, one of those women — Roselyn “Rosie” Keo, considered one of the scheme’s two ringleaders — posed for photographers at the Toronto International Film Festival.

Keo, who was sentenced to five years probation in 2016, was in Toronto to watch her own story play out onscreen in Hustlers, a new movie from writer-director Lorene Scafaria, which premiered at the festival on Sept. 7 and hits theaters nationwide Sept. 13.

Hustlers is based on Jessica Pressler’s December 2015 New York magazine article “The Hustlers at Scores Strip Club,” for which the journalist interviewed both Keo and the scheme’s other leader, Samantha Foxx (née Barbash; This story will refer to her as Barbash since that is the name she went by at the time and the name listed in court documents). The women recounted a deep friendship that turned to sisterhood which then turned dark.

Canadian Lynx Coat as Seen in Hustlers Movie JLO

Hustlers Story

Scafaria read Pressler’s article, the filmmaker tells TIME, she “found it to be a fascinating friendship story at its core.” She says she knew that if she were to adapt this story for the screen, it had to come from Pressler’s article, rather than court documents and tabloids. This way, a character based on Pressler could serve as a stand-in for the viewer, allowing the audience to empathize with the characters. “I thought that Jessica and Rosie’s relationship was incredibly interesting — the relationship between a storyteller and their subject,” Scafaria says.

Some details of what the Special Narcotics Prosecutor called “repugnant scheme” altered for the film. Scafaria set out to be faithful to the story Pressler wrote, even cutting out the movie’s sound at one point when a recorder used by the movie’s reporter (who is based on Pressler and played by Julia Stiles) is flipped off. She changed the names of the leading women: Roselyn Keo becomes Destiny, played by Constance Wu; Jennifer Lopez’s character, Ramona, is inspired by Barbash. Her business partners, Karina Pascucci and Marsi Rosen, are loosely translated into Annabelle (Lili Reinhart) and Mercedes (Keke Palmer). Cardi B, Lizzo, and a male R&B star (whose identity is best left to viewers to learn upon watching the film) make appearances in the movie, too.

“The responsibility to the truth and what happened,” Scafaria says, “and it’s not a black and white story, after all.”