At the 2025 Barnstable Brown Gala, 18-year-old Dannielynn Birkhead honored her late mother, Anna Nicole Smith, in a deeply personal way: by wearing the same gown Smith wore to the gala in 2004.
The Gala is one of the Derby weekend’s most anticipated events, and Dannielynn Birkhead and dad, Larry Birkhead, have made it a tradition to attend for the last 15 years.
The elegant black dress featured a plunging neckline, sparkling crystal straps and a dramatic open back.
Dannielynn Birkhead even styled her hair in a tousled updo reminiscent of the look her mother wore more than two decades earlier, making the tribute all the more striking.
Dannielynn Birkhead On , Larry shared photos of the emotional fashion moment, writing, “She’s wearing Anna Nicole’s dress from this very same event, 21 years ago. Life full circle.”
He added that Dannielynn chose it simply because it was her mom’s, and “super cool.”
The post drew comparisons between mother and daughter, with one commenter writing, “You both look amazing!!! At first glance, I saw Anna and thought it was a very old pic. Wow, does Dannielynn look like her Mother.”
At last year’s event, Dannielynn wore a black ensemble once owned by Janet Jackson, sourced from a charity auction.
“I think she’s doing a fashion experiment for herself,” he said. “Also, I think it’s really meaningful for her to wear. I’m just glad she’s going through and starting to wear some of Dannielynn Birkhead Smith’s clothes] because she could literally pick out an outfit a day for the rest of her life and never wear the same thing twice with everything.”
Larry also revealed that he spends “over $200,000 in storage bills” to conserve all of Smith’s clothes and belongings for his daughter. “just hope that she would appreciate some of these things someday,” he shared. “She’s just now starting to get into the curiosity of some of the fashion and things in her mom’s world.”
Larry continued, “When somebody passes away, you think, ‘Oh, I’m not getting rid of anything. And then you go through the emotions of, okay, do I really want this? Do I really need this? Dannielynn Birkhead and you think, ‘Well, if there’s just one thing in there that she can connect with, that gives her a sense of who her mom was. So it was really special that she picked out the dress to wear.”
Larry and Dannielynn have attended the Kentucky Derby together since she was 3 years old, a tradition that Larry said “was really born out of the babysitter cancelling on me the first year I brought her.”
He continued, “And then everybody was like, ‘Oh, how cute. And then I thought, ‘Well, she wasn’t that much trouble last year. So it became a tradition. Then people started looking for us and then the outfits had to be bigger.”
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