Princess Diana was a style icon, and no outfit garnered as much attention as her “revenge dress.”
On June 29, 1994, Princess Diana attended a gala at the Serpentine Gallery in London, wearing a fitted, black, off-the-shoulder dress with an asymmetrical hemline and a chiffon train that flowed in the wind. The revealing ensemble was unusual for a member of the typically conservative royal family, but that’s not the only reason it grabbed headlines: Diana wore the head-turning number the same night Prince Charles confessed on national television that he had been unfaithful to her.
As reported by The New York Times, in an ITV documentary that aired a year and a half following the couple’s split, Queen Elizabeth’s eldest son and heir said he remained faithful to Diana “until it became irretrievably broken down,” confirming rumors of his affair with now-wife Camilla Parker-Bowles. “It is a deeply regrettable thing to happen, but it does happen, and unfortunately, in this case, it has happened,” Charles said.
“On a human level, for Diana, you can only imagine how upsetting that would have been, not only to hear that but to know that now the world has heard it. Effectively, Charles has aired some serious dirty laundry,” explained PEOPLE Executive Editorial Director Michelle Tauber in PEOPLE’s “Diana Diaries.” “Some may have decided this was altogether too much and tried to avoid the cameras, stay out of the limelight — just let the storm pass. That is not what Diana chose to do that night.”
Princess Diana kept her scheduled appearance at the gala hosted by Vanity Fair. “Of course, Diana knew that all eyes were going to be on her,” PEOPLE Deputy Style Director Brittany Talarico explained. “She didn’t have to say anything with words. It was a fashion response — that dress became her clear message to Charles and the world.”
However, she did change her outfit plans. Princess Diana was initially going to wear a Valentino dress to the event, but when the ensemble was leaked to the press, she made a last-minute switch to the famous black number by designer Christina Stambolian she’d kept in her closet.
“Three years went by and she hadn’t worn it. I was very disappointed,” Stambolian recalled in Claudia Joseph’s 2022 book Diana: A Life in Dresses, per HuffPost UK. “Then I realised she had been waiting for the right occasion. She looked like a beautiful black bird in it.”
With that dress, Princess Diana made a major statement without having to say anything at all. “She decided that she was going to fight back, and she decided that she would choose a dress that she had previously rejected as being a little too much. And she would put that on and go out on the town,” said William Ivey Long, costume designer for the Broadway musical Diana.
Three years later, Princess Diana put what became dubbed the “revenge dress” by the media up for auction along with more of her clothes. It sold for $65,000. The money benefitted cancer and AIDS-related charities.
In 2017, the “revenge dress” was displayed in the Museum of Style Icons, located in Ireland. The exhibition, Diana: A Fashion Legacy, was a way to honor the late princess on the 20th anniversary of her death.
Elizabeth Debicki, who portrayed Princess Diana in seasons 5 and 6 of The Crown, wore a replica of the iconic little black dress, which Left Bank Pictures auctioned off in early 2024 along with more than 400 other props from the critically acclaimed Netflix series.
Source: The New York Times, PEOPLE, HuffPost UK
