Princess Diana”s dresses go on display, 20 years after her death
Kensington Palace in London was home to Princess Diana for 15 years. Now it is set to be to be the place where the memorial events for the 20th anniversary of her death will begin. An exhibition of her most important dresses will tell the story of her transformation from the shy daughter of aristocrats […]
Kensington Palace in London was home to Princess Diana for 15 years. Now it is set to be to be the place where the memorial events for the 20th anniversary of her death will begin.
An exhibition of her most important dresses will tell the story of her transformation from the shy daughter of aristocrats to a renowned and powerful woman.
The dark side – the divorce from Prince Charles, the secret lovers, the fatal car accident at age 36 – is left out. The show "Diana – Her Fashion Story" lets the dresses speak for themselves.
The young Lady Diana Specer was a stranger to the designer fashion world, visitors are told. According to the exhibition, which runs for two years, she owned just one dress, one blouse and one pair of good shoes: everything else she borrowed from friends.
At first the 20-year old Diana was slow to settle into her new role after her marriage to Prince Charles in 1981. After the "Romantic Look" of the 1980s, with its lace and many ruffles, came the designer evening dresses, which she could deploy as diplomatic tools.
When her marriage began to flounder at the start of the 90s, her clothes became a communicator of her independence and power, the show elucidates.
Diana’s debutante dress from 1979, a pale-pink chiffon blouse (which she wore in 1981 to her first official photo appointment) and the brown tweed suit from her honeymoon in Scotland are all on display as examples of the early years.
"We see her growing in confidence throughout her life, increasingly taking control of how she was represented, and intelligently communicating through her clothes," says curator Eleri Lynn. "This is a story many women around the world can relate to."
The majority of the 25 pieces on display have been brought in from museums and private collections from within and without the country – only around 5 are the possessions of the palace.
Diana was not particularly aware of the the value of her dresses and gave a lot of them away for good causes, Lynn explains.
Amongst several pieces collected at auctions is a giant check blue-green woollen coat by the designer David Emanuel, which Diana wore in Venice in 1985. The piece was mocked in the fashion pages as a "horse blanket".
One highlight is without a doubt an ink blue silk dress made by Victor Edelstein that Diana wore to twirl around the dance floor with John Travolta at the White House state dinner. Two years later she wore the "Travolta Dress" at an official visit to Bonn, Germany.
The curators also want to draw attention to the wrinkle marks from her then-small sons William and Harry on the 1985 dark-green silk dress by Edelstein.
Accompanying a chiffon dress for the Cannes Film Festival in 1987 is an anecdote about how she would often go to the cinema disguised with glasses and a headscarf.
For an official visit to Spain, Diana chose a red and black dress in flamenco style, matched with long silk gloves – one in red and one in black.
A silk dress for a trip to Saudi Arabia was embellished with a falcon – the oil-rich state’s national symbol.
In the 90s (her separation from Charles was made known in 1992) there was a marked crossover to the "Working Wardrobe". Catherine Walker, Diana’s favourite designer, produced sharply-cut day suits in which Diana went about her charitable works, from meals at the Savoy Hotel to visits to AIDS patients. Walker died in 2010 of cancer.
The crowning glory is to be found in the last exhibition room, where five of her most famous evening dresses are on display. Diana wore them at a photo shoot with star photographer Mario Testino ahead of the auction of 79 of her dresses at Christie’s in New York in June 1997 – two months before her death. (DPA)