Before “revenge dressing” became a phrase everyone understood, Princess Diana had already mastered it.
The black Christina Stambolian dress she wore in 1994 is returning to the spotlight, with the legendary gown set to go under the hammer in New York on December 9. Sotheby’s expects it to sell for as much as $300,000.
But the price tag is almost beside the point.
What makes the dress so valuable is what happened when Diana wore it. The look was everything royal dressing was not. The silk mini dress left her shoulders bare, stopped well above the knee and came with an attitude that needed no explanation. Diana finished it with black heels, a clutch, red nails and a sapphire-and-diamond choker made from a royal heirloom.
She could have chosen something safer. Instead, she chose the dress she had reportedly kept in her wardrobe because she considered it too daring.
Then she wore it on one of the most heavily scrutinised nights of her life. That decision changed the way the public saw her. Diana wasn’t hiding behind royal polish or trying to soften the headlines surrounding her marriage. She walked into the Serpentine Gallery looking completely in control of herself.
The press eventually gave the moment its now-famous name: the revenge dress.
And while the nickname suggests that Diana was dressing to get back at someone, the more interesting story is what the outfit did for her. It shifted the attention away from what was happening to Diana and back towards Diana herself.
Suddenly, she wasn’t simply the Princess caught in a royal marriage crisis. She was a woman making her own fashion choices, on her own terms, in front of the entire world.
That is why the dress has outlived the headlines surrounding it.
Diana auctioned 79 of her dresses for charity in 1997, including the Stambolian gown. Now, almost three decades later, it is being offered for sale again, with a copy of the original auction catalogue signed by Diana and Stambolian included with the piece.
The dress will first be exhibited in London before travelling to Hong Kong and Geneva, ahead of its New York auction.
Almost 32 years after that famous night, fashion still remembers the dress.
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