Why the Designers of Princess Diana’s Black Sheep Jumper are Auctioning It Off
Warm & Wonderful‘s Joanna Osborne on finding the ‘witty knit’ in a wine box in her attic.
Major news in the world of royal fashion this week: Lady Diana Spencer’s original black sheep jumper is headed to the auction block. Sotheby’s announced Monday that the celebrated knit, first seen on the princess-to-be before her wedding in 1981, would go up for sale this fall in New York as part of its Fashion Icons collection. Early estimates put the price between $50,000 and $80,000.
My Instagram DMs lit up. “If we all band together, we can buy it and then Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants it!” one person wrote. Can you imagine?! But really: I can’t think of another piece of royal fashion that is so instantly recognizable or beloved. To my SMT mind, the attention around the sweater speaks to the delicious (and rebellious) message it sends.
The style’s popularity with royal watchers today, more than four decades after its debut, is thanks in large part to its rebirth with Rowing Blazers. The original design duo, Joanna Osborne and Sally Muir of Warm & Wonderful, were contacted by Jack Carlson in 2019 and together they reissued the sweater (I adore mine!). Now, the sheep is emblazoned on everything from hats to tote bags and mugs.
Back to the princess who put the print on the map. As readers of my book, HRH, already know, Diana had not one but two of these jumpers. Her second sweater moment in 1983 was billed as a “repeat” at the time. But the closer I looked at the photographs, the clearer it was to me that this was not the same sweater. (More on the differences in my video here.) Later, Osborne and Muir confirmed my reporting, sharing that Diana returned the original to them asking for it to be repaired. They sent her a new one instead.
So what happened to the first sweater? Osborne stumbled upon it in her attic earlier this year — really! “It’s so corny, it feels almost untrue. But it is completely true,” she told me via Zoom this week. “Honestly, we had no idea we had it.”
Below you’ll find our conversation, with more on how Osborne discovered the sweater, what Diana’s support meant to the brand, and why the designers decided to put this iconic piece of royal fashion up for auction. 🐑
Before I share my chat with Osborne, a bit of context for you. There is a history of Diana’s clothes being auctioned off — going back to the princess herself. In 1997, after her divorce and just weeks before her tragic death, Diana put 79 of her own dresses up for sale, with the proceeds going to AIDS charities.
Why did she do it? The motivation was partly logistical; the garments were taking up valuable space in Kensington Palace. But I think more importantly was the spirit of it all. It was a public and dramatic way for Diana to shed her royal past and signal the start of a new chapter in her life. “Clothes are not as essential to my work as they used to be,” she said at the time. The auction was held in New York, feeding the American fascination with Diana and appeasing Charles, who wasn’t keen on the idea of his ex-wife’s dresses being sold too close to home.
Pieces from Diana’s wardrobe have made their way to the auction block for decades since. Earlier this year, a purple velvet dress Diana wore for a portrait with Mario Testino went up for sale. The princess had included it in her 1997 auction, where it sold for $24,150. This time around, more than 25 years later, it smashed expectations that it would sell for $120,000 and went for a staggering $604,800.
But not every piece has that kind of power. Just a few years ago, the velvet dress Diana wore to dance with John Travolta at the White House was expected to fetch £350,000. In the end, it sold for £264,000.
PS: For more, here is a piece I wrote for Town & Country last fall on the big business of Princess Diana.
Why Princess Diana’s Black Sheep Jumper is Headed to the Auction Block
Please note: Our conversation has been edited and condensed.
Hello! It’s lovely to chat again, especially with this big news. How are you feeling?
Joanna Osborne: The media coverage has been phenomenal. Absolutely amazing. It’s buzzing ’round here — what can I say? [Laughs]
What a discover you’ve made! And in your attic. Tell me how you stumbled across the sweater.
I think it was February or March this year. We’ve got a big house and it’s got a large, very full attic. I was looking for an old pattern, of which there are 2,000 on giant bits of graph paper. They’re incredibly unwieldy. I was completely knackered and I was just thinking, Oh God, I’ll never find this pattern.
I just happened to see this old wine box and I looked inside it. There was this cotton bedspread — which is significant because being cotton, it didn’t infect the jumper at all, if it had been with other bits of wool, it would’ve really decomposed — and this rolled up sheep jumper. I had a kind of ‘Groundhog Day’ moment and thought, Could it be? Could it be the actual one that Diana had?
What made you think it was Diana’s sweater?
I looked at the cuff. The one that Buckingham Palace sent back to us, the cuff had fallen off, which never happened. I mean, there were other mistakes, but not that particular one. The cuffs are put on with a linking stitch, so when you break the link, it unravels. Really, it never, ever happens, so it was particularly unique.
And I just thought, My God, maybe we kept it? Because we were really young then, we were swamped with orders and we were desperate to get them out. I thought we’d possibly just cobbled it together and sent it to somebody? Or I don’t know, we lost it? I hadn’t even thought that we might have kept it.
And then I phoned Sal [Warm & Wonderful co-founder Sally Muir] and said, You know what? I think I might have found the actual Diana jumper.
There are an enormous amount of photographs with her wearing it so it was quite easy to compare the two. We were absolutely convinced it was the one, because there would be no other reason for keeping a jumper. Neither of us had sheep jumpers at the time because we were so frantic trying to make the orders that we couldn’t have one ourselves. We were really, really sure [it was Diana’s jumper]. And then we thought, Well, what are we going to do about this?
Having just been an old jumper, it suddenly became a jumper of immense significance. And so we thought, Well, we have to sell it. By having it, it’s just an incredible responsibility. It could get mothy or something could happen to it. It had been an ordinary object and now it was a very, very precious object. So we decided to contact the top people at Sotheby’s in New York to see if they were interested. And they just jumped at the chance.
No part of you wanted to keep the jumper?
No, no. I just didn’t want the responsibility. I really, really didn’t. Someone else can look after it, somebody else can enjoy it. I don’t know. Neither of us thought, We must keep it for the future. No, no. I think it’s much better off going to somebody who really, really wants it.
Let’s rewind to 1981 when Lady Diana Spencer first wore the sheep jumper. Take us back to that moment. How old were you? What did your business look like then?
I was 26. We were small. We had about 10 knitters in South London where we worked, in a studio with a shop front. It was not a professional shop! People were quite keen on the whole homespun idea.
We had no idea [Diana] had one. Absolutely none at all. So when I went to buy the Sunday papers in the morning, as you did in those days, it was just the most unbelievable shock and lovely surprise to see it there. We thought, Wow, gosh, this is amazing. And we must do something about it. But we weren’t quite sure what to do! There was no internet back then.
What’s very sweet is our parents were incredibly supportive of our fledgling business. And my father immediately phoned Buckingham Palace to find out if we could get a royal warrant, only to find out that we had to dedicate five years of our life supplying the royal family before we could even be considered. [Laughs] We were very excited. After a few weeks, the press found us, and then we were on the map.
Do you have any idea of how the jumper got to Diana?
We think it was given to her by the mother of one of her page boys. We don’t know for certain, but we think that’s how it got there. It was certainly given to her. It was a gift. Not from us, but from somebody else.
What did her wearing it mean for your business?
We got absolutely inundated. The postman would arrive with a vast sack on his shoulder each morning like Father Christmas. He put piles and piles of letters into our shop. We’d employ our friends and our friends’ children to help us open them. We would send out catalogs that we’d rushed to make and then get letters with checks and orders. We started showing in New York after that in 1983, and we moved into hand knits as well. We moved on a bit, away from the witty knit.
The sheep jumpers are knitted on hand-operated machines. There’s no electricity, it’s a bit like a loom. They’re finished by hand. And that’s significant because of course we had to get provenance from Sotheby’s through a third-party authentication company. They wouldn’t just take our word for it. They have to have proof that it was one that Diana wore. We had a lot of Zoom calls over two weeks. And there’s just no doubt because each one was sewn separately. Each one was knitted by different people. All the [sheep] eyes were sewn on by hand. We used to do it in the evenings out at dinners and things sit there, people sewing on eyes! [Laughs] And they absolutely agreed that it was definitely the one.
When you think back to the first time Diana wore the jumper, what do you think was her intention? Why did she choose your piece?
The first time she wore it was as a young, quite naive, unaware girl with a sense of humor. You can tell by the way she’s sitting wearing it. She looks kind of shy. She was only 19. And then the second time she wore a second jumper — was it you who noticed there were two?
Yes! When writing my book, I noticed that the press reports from the time called the sweater a repeat. But as I looked closer at the pictures, it was clear that it wasn’t the exact same piece.
It was! It was you!
There are subtle but notable differences, like the direction the black sheep is facing.
The black sheep moves on every single one. We never told the knitters where to put the black sheep. Each one did their own thing. They’re all unique.
And the second time she wore it, you can tell she’s much more savvy. It’s a very different person. She’s accessorized it with that big white collar and the black tie, the white jeans. She looks as though she’s in control and possibly is sending a message.
When the palace sent back the first sweater, did you think about repairing it?
We weren’t thinking, We’ll keep the old one and send her a new one. We were thinking, Oh my God, this is just awful! [Laughs] This is our big moment and the cuff has fallen off. She must have really wrenched it off her body. I don’t know what she did with it, but it really had to be put back together. It had very long floats between the red yarn behind the white sheep, and it was quite easy to catch on jewelry and things. So we just replaced it. No question!
Do you know where the second one is?
No idea. No idea at all. Absolutely none. Maybe Kate? Or Meghan? Maybe! [Laughs] I don’t think so, I don’t think any of them have it.
I was going to ask, have you heard from Diana’s boys at all? It’s such an iconic piece of royal fashion.
No, no, absolutely nothing. I mean, it’s early days. It’s only been out in the public domain for about a day.
Did any part of you want to return the sweater to them? Or give it to a museum?
There is one in the V&A [EH note: It’s not one of Diana’s]. But no, not really. We’ve never had anything of this nature before in our business. It’s always been a very small business. We’ve never earned a fortune doing it. We’ve just decided this is a moment. It’s just pure luck.
Will you and Sally split the proceeds?
We’ll split the proceeds. We’ll also give a little bit to Jack at Rowing Blazers, because they really raised our profile enormously. Depending on how much it goes for, we’ll see what happens. Let’s see how much it goes for.
Have you considered giving any of it to charity?
We’ll see how much it goes for really. At the moment, we have no idea. But we’ll think about that.
Do you have any predictions?
They have predictions! They’re very modest with their predictions — they’ve said $50,000 or something. With an auction, it entirely depends on demand. They’re very excited and they’re very optimistic.
My mind always goes to who would buy something like this. Do you have any thoughts or hopes about where it will end up?
Will somebody put it in a glass cabinet in the hall of their large house? Or will a museum want to buy it, do some negotiation with us? Who knows, who knows.
[EH note: Just this week the auction of one of Diana’s necklaces was called off. The piece was “privately sold to a prominent museum,” according to Guernsey’s auction house in New York City.]
My thanks to Joanna! After our chat, I remembered a conversation I had earlier this year with the Smithsonian’s Lisa Kathleen Graddy (which you can read here and here). She is the curator of the fashion-focused first ladies exhibition at the National Museum of American History. “For people most of us will never meet, [their clothes are] the only thing we get to see,” Graddy said. And I think seeing someone’s clothing helps a person take shape in our minds, quite literally, in an important way.
My hope is that with a piece as beloved as a sheep jumper, it will be viewable in some capacity. It is such a defining piece and I would love to see it! Alternatively, a very small part of me hopes the buyer wears it, endlessly and enthusiastically, because that seems like something Diana would have loved.
Where do you think Diana’s sweater should end up? How much do you think it will sell for? I would love to hear your thoughts in the comments.
I totally respect them auctioning it off. They created something wonderful and deserve to profit from it. I'd love to see Harry and Meghan buy it.
I really appreciate the thought, "We don't want to be caretakers of this!" It's a wonder the sweater stayed in such good condition this long without proper storage.