Princess Diana’s Daywear Gets Its Moment on the Auction Block
Hold the gowns! Today’s sale focuses on everyday favorites, including the much-loved ‘Caring Dress.’
When Princess Diana auctioned off her fashion in the summer of 1997, she focused on one category: gowns. With her divorce from then-Prince Charles finalized, she sought to shed her “clotheshorse” image and free up some space in her Kensington Palace closets. She selected 79 dresses to be sold at Christie’s in New York, causing quite the stir and earning more than $3 million for her charities.
Weeks later, in the wake of princess’s tragic death, the pieces took on new meaning — and their value soared. In the decades since, those gowns and other glamorous dresses have returned to the auction block, often making headlines for fetching record-breaking sums.
It’s easy to understand the excitement around these statement styles. The same is true in royal fashion conversations and coverage today, with the most buzz given to anything that dazzles. A repeat outfit, as we have seen with Catherine, the Princess of Wales this year, doesn’t garner quite the same response.
But what if it means even more? That’s what I left thinking this week, after a preview of the latest sale of Princess Diana’s fashion. A blue floral design by Bellville Sassoon, known as the “Caring Dress,” is the star lot in the sale by Julien’s Auctions, which specializes in this kind of memorabilia. The above-the-knee piece, with ruching at the waist and a slight puff to the sleeve, must have been a favorite of Diana’s; the auction house recorded her wearing it at least nine (!) times.
I recognized it instantly when the auction was announced, recalling the above photograph I chose for my book, HRH. The memorable image shows Diana on a visit to a hostel in Brazil in 1991. She is surrounded by children, having chosen the bright dress specifically to appeal to those little ones. The princess wore the style on a range of other outings, too, from her second tour of Australia to a boat in Spain and a visit to an AIDS charity in West London.
I leapt at the chance to see the dress in person this week and talk about its significance with Michael Amato, fashion specialist for Julien’s Auctions. Below, Amato explains the draw of the Caring Dress and the aspects of the design that perhaps made it a go-to (hint: it has to do with the cut of the sleeves). Keep scrolling for insights on other pieces up for sale today, including a magenta ski suit and an assortment of shoes and handbags. What do these well-loved, repeated styles tell us about Diana?
Princess Diana’s Style & A Royal Collection gets underway today, Thursday, June 26, at 10am PT. The full assortment, as well as how to register to bid, is here. I am heading there shortly — and will bring you along with me over on Instagram! Any guesses for how much these piece will fetch? Place your best estimates in the comments.
ICYMI: My earlier auction reporting has resulted in some of my favorite stories of late. The most memorable is a recent article I wrote for Town & Country about one particularly avid Diana collector, who has amassed more than 2,700 pieces. You can read all about Renae Plant, her expansive assortment (including the second black sheep sweater, seen below) and her Princess Diana Museum here.
A Celebration of Princess Diana’s Daywear
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Please note: Our conversation has been edited and condensed.
Tell us about this year’s auction. What’s going up for sale?
Michael Amato, fashion specialist, Julien’s Auctions: It’s a two part sale. The first part is really an homage to Diana and her style and how it continues to gain fanfare. With this auction, we have items that range from pieces from early on when she first came onto the world stage, with her John Boyd honeymoon hat, to pieces where she wore later on in her life, like her Dior handbag. It tells a really great narrative of who she was when she first became the Princess of Wales and who she was as a woman before her untimely passing.
The second part is a collection of royal pieces from the Windsors, going back to the late 19th century. We have pieces from King George V, Queen Mary, and then also from the son of Queen Victoria, the former Prince of Wales.
Diana’s pieces are the draw for so many. Tell us a bit about the star in this offering, her blue floral day dress.
The highlight piece is known as the Caring Dress, designed by Bellville Sassoon. It has gained an audience of its own because this piece has never been offered at auction. It was obviously a very special piece to Princess Diana because she wore it so many times. We recorded her wearing it about nine times. The images that you see of her in the dress have obviously provoked a very strong reaction as well. There are a lot of very affectionate photographs of her at hospices and with patients. It’s a very personal piece with a lot of pull to it.
I love that a daywear style is so celebrated in this sale, rather than the usual show-stealing gowns.
A gown is very stoic. It’s very polished. You’re presenting an image, a persona, when you’re going out for an evening. When you’re wearing a dress that’s a little bit more relaxed in style, you’re showing more of your personality: This is who I am, this is how I feel today.
Her gowns are beautiful. The great thing about her auction in 1997 [of 79 gowns] was it allowed people to really be able to engage with that side of her style. It allowed [the dresses] to be seen, to be more in the public view, in the years since. When you have pieces like the Caring Dress that come out for the first time, there is a fascination because it hasn’t been seen in a public forum before.
This dress feels more intimate in a way?
I think intimate is a great word because that’s how Princess Diana was. She was very tactile, and she liked to express her emotions. She was very physical with the people she came into contact with. For this particular dress — the pattern, the texture of the fabric — it’s a fashion that’s very close to who she was as a person.
EH note: At the press preview this week, I talked about this dress with Amato and Renae Plant, an avid collector of Diana’s pieces, founder of the Princess Diana Museum, and the subject of my April profile in Town & Country magazine. Plant met the late princess twice in her native Australia. The second occasion, in 1988 when Plant was a teen, was the inaugural outing of the Caring Dress. Here are their two observations:
Renae Plant: When she shook my hand, she reached up and you could see her little blue bra under here [gesturing to the sleeve] that actually matched. It’s full circle, really honestly — it represents who she was as a person and what she stood for while she was alive. I cry when I look at it.
Michael Amato: Bellville Sassoon knew that the Australia tour would be very hot. By having these overlaid tulip sleeves, it gave the dress more ventilation and obviously more room for movement. The ruching at the waist was very 80s. You can see how children would gravitate towards it, it was very eye-catching.
What other Diana fashions are you excited about in this sale?
We have a ski suit that she wore numerous times, which I feel is so iconic. You can’t get more 80s sportswear glam. It shows who Princess Diana was recreationally. This was her off duty. She wasn’t doing public engagements. Yes, she was being photographed, but this was her enjoying her holiday. She was out on the slopes. She loved to ski, she loved to be active.
So often we have the image of the People’s Princess with her being very demure in beautiful, feminine pieces, like her day dresses. And then you get the more bold and structured pieces, like the ski suit.
She was very strategic in the types of colors that she would wear. She knew the surroundings. She wasn’t afraid to be seen. If you think about it, a scarlet-colored ski suit against white slopes is very, very bold. A lot of [skiers] were wearing black, which is also a contrast. I think it shows she was a very personable person — and she also just looks incredibly glamorous.
As I learned with last year’s sale, the accessories round out the fashion offerings in an interesting way.
We have the John Boyd hat hat she wore when she boarded the train following her wedding. It was her going-away hat. It’s a beautiful archer-style, apricot-colored hat that she wore with a Bellville Sassoon suit. It shows very much who she was at the time. She was dressing for her role, she hadn’t yet discovered her own style. It capitalized the romanticism of the period and the fairytale aspect of the wedding. In the years following, I think Diana became more of an active voice in what she wanted to wear and how she wanted to wear it.
One of the pairs of shoes that I really enjoy is a two-tone green and black pair by Rayne. She wore them numerous times, including when she brought Prince Harry and Prince William to a dinosaur exhibit at the Natural History Museum. She almost always wore them with a Moschino suit. Moschino is known for being a very avant-garde and outlandish designer. It was cool to see her starting to play with Italian designers. Also, matching her shoes to her outfit was very of the time — your hat matched your handbag, which matched your shoes. There’s a ceremonial aspect when you get dressed with everything matching.
The shoes and the accessories tell a story of who she was for official engagements. It’s how we saw her, holding hands, giving hugs, speaking with people. We always love to associate Princess Diana with her Spencer Tiara or the Lover’s Knot Tiara, or wearing a beautiful floor-length gown by Catherine Walker. But it’s also nice to see: Oh, this is how she was every day.
I have to ask about the Lady Dior handbag in the sale, another iconic Diana style.
What’s so cool about this Lady Dior bag is that these seams are not symmetrical. It starts off wider at the bottom and tapers in towards the top. That’s how we were able to identify her using it in 1995.
We knew she had [many] Lady Diors, numerous patent leather ones, alligator, all these different finishes. This is lambskin and sometimes lambskin can have more of a patent gloss to it because it’s such a thin leather. It picks up more reflection because there’s more stretch. When you see lambskin, it has a little bit more of a suppleness to it than calfskin sometimes. Calfskin usually has a longer glare to it. There’s more of a rippling effect of light with lambskin, which imitates patent.
[EH note: Bidding for this bag ahead of the auction is already at $22,500.]
The sale also includes fashion pieces that Diana was not photographed wearing. Can you explain the authentication process of those pieces?
We authenticate things based on the person who is bringing it in. We can’t disclose who the consignor is, but they must have a secure line of provenance that we’re able to trace back to where it originally came from, belonging to Princess Diana. As long as it has a clear line where it goes directly to her, we’re able to put it into auction.
Princess Diana was very strategic in how and when she wore things. Designers — this was before smart devices — wouldn’t know until the day following that she wore something. She did not say beforehand. Jacques Azagury didn’t know she was going to wear one of his dresses until he saw her on the news when he was in a pub watching a soccer match. Same with Catherine Walker, she wouldn’t know until the following day if Diana wore something. And Victor Edelstein, he didn’t know that she was going to wear the blue velvet Travolta gown to the White House. He knew designs were brought to DC, but he didn’t know if she was going to wear it.
There are also times when Diana would wear pieces to engagements that were not public. She wasn’t photographed. When you have pieces that you haven’t seen her in but you know they belonged to Princess Diana, it shows that she probably bought them for herself to wear. It wasn’t necessarily always for public consumption. These might be more private pieces that she loved to wear for herself.
I think that’s probably an appeal to a buyer, because the Versace pieces [in the auction] are really beautiful. She likely wore them to lunches, dinners, sometimes at Kensington Palace, sometimes they would be held at a private venue. Her relationship with Gianni Versace is very interesting as well. He would have to edit his designs down to fit her personal aesthetic. He said he gave her fashion, but with a hint of glamour.
As you look to the future, do you think people will continue to consign their Diana pieces? Or is scarcity setting in at all, with people wanting to hold onto their acquisitions?
Diana was so generous with a lot of the pieces that she would give to people. You would see Fergie wearing pieces that Diana wore. You would see her sister, Sarah, wearing things that Diana wore. She would give them to friends and so forth. It was a time where — and we didn’t know she was going to die at such a young age — there wasn’t really a framework for keeping and collecting and archiving her fashion. In the 90s, no one had the foresight to be like: Oh, this is a key piece. Let’s keep this, we’ll put it into an archive, which is unfortunate. But the good news is people are discovering the value and continued impact that Princess Diana has.
I’m hoping, as these auctions continue, people will want to either consign or bring to light some pieces that haven’t been seen since Diana’s lifetime. But they are harder to find. The gowns have been offered and re-offered since 1997. People want to hold onto them so they maintain their value — and not to exhaust them by constantly going up for auction.
Hopefully, more people will want to consign, just so people are able to see and interact with these pieces again. Once they go into a private collection or are purchased by a private buyer, you don’t know where they’re going to go and what they’re going to be used for. There are great people like Renae Plant who want to continue to share Princess Diana’s legacy. But that’s not always the case.
My thanks to Michael and the team at Julien’s Auctions. I am off to watch it unfold live! Princess Diana’s Style & A Royal Collection takes place today, Thursday, June 26 at 10am PT. Register here and follow along over on my Instagram.
This was so fascinating to read! Thank you, Elizabeth!
I had a question about where the "Caring Dress" (for instance) has been all this time, but your article partly answered it---possibly Diana herself gave it away and her family or friends have owned it all these years. And it can be traced back. I wondered if William or Harry has any of them, still,---- I suppose we will never know? Wouldn't it be cool if Kate were to cut down one of them (Diana was slim, but Kate is slimmer!) and rewear it?? Wouldn't the world FREAK OUT?