Princess Diana wore several iconic outfits in her lifetime – from her royal blue engagement suit and her wedding gown with its 25-ft train, to the red ‘black sheep’ jumper she sported to a polo match at Windsor – but most memorable of all has to be her so-called ‘revenge dress’.
Recreated for a scene in the The Crown season 5, with Elizabeth Debicki wearing a replica of the black dress as Diana, it remains one of the Princess of Wales’s most famous, and beautiful, looks.
So, what is the story behind the ‘revenge dress’?
The true story behind Diana’s most iconic outfit
A body-con, off-the-shoulder black silk cocktail dress with an asymmetric hemline that stopped above the knee, the ‘revenge dress’, is arguably one of the most dramatic outfits Princess Diana ever wore.
Teamed with a stunning pearl choker necklace, black tights and stiletto heels, the dress was designed by Christina Stambolian and was worn by the Princess to an event at the Serpentine Gallery in London, on June 29th 1994.
According to Vogue, Diana had owned the dress for three years, but had never worn it because she was worried it was “too daring”. In fact, the magazine reported that her decision to wear the dress had been a last minute one, and she had originally intended to wear a gown by Valentino.
“She wanted to look a million dollars,” Diana’s former stylist and late Vogue editor Anna Harvey said. “And she did.”
Dame Julia Peyton-Jones, former director of the Serpentine Gallery, wrote about Diana’s arrival at the event in The Telegraph.
“As she got out of the car, it was impossible not to gasp,” she wrote. “Diana was one of the most famous and beautiful women in the world… it was as if she’d come down to earth from another planet. She looked sensational in her off-the-shoulder, low-cut garment, and we all felt drab and old-fashioned in comparison.”
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Diana’s arrival at the gallery in The Dress became one of her most photographed moments, and it wasn’t just because she looked so stunning – it was also due to the timing of her appearance in it. She finally chose to wear the daring dress on the same night that Jonathan Dimbleby’s revealing interview with her estranged husband, Prince Charles, was broadcast on ITV.
In the interview, Charles admitted his marriage to Diana had “irretrievably broken down” and confessed he had committed adultery (it was confirmed the following day that his ongoing affair was with Camilla Parker Bowles).
So as Charles’s infidelity was broadcast around the world, Diana strode from her car in her jaw-dropping gown and drew as many front page headlines the following day as her husband, with The Sun declaring she was “The Thrilla He Left To Woo Camilla”.
The designer of the dress, Christina Stambolian, said in the book Diana: A Life In Dresses that she was “thrilled to see Diana wear it on that night of all nights”.
“She chose not to play the scene like Odette, innocent in white. She was clearly angry. She played it like Odile in black. She wore bright red nail enamel, which we had never seen her do before. She was saying: ‘Let’s be wicked tonight.’”
Diana’s risqué dress remains one of her most-loved, and iconic, fashion statements, but at the time not everyone was impressed.
A columnist in The Telegraph wrote the next day: “The Princess of Wales did not have to dine out before the television cameras at the Serpentine Gallery last night in order to avoid seeing her husband sharing his soul with the nation on the box. She could have watched a video, played bridge or simply washed her hair and curled up in bed… It’s amazing what some people will do to avoid press speculation.”
Oh well, you can’t please everyone.
What happened to the dress?
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The size 10 dress cost £900 when it was made and it sold at auction in July 1997 for £39,098 and bought by Scottish couple Graeme and Briege Mackenzie.
“I can’t fit into it, but that’s not really the idea in this instance,” Mrs Mackenzie told The Independent. “We bought it to raise funds for the charity Children 1st.” According to Hello Magazine, the couple placed it in a bank vault following Princess Diana’s death on August 31st 1997.
Designer Stambolian made one replica in Diana’s exact sizing that can be viewed at the Museum of Style Icons in Newbridge, County Kildare as part of their exhibition of Diana’s dresses.
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