- Diana wore the ‘revenge dress’ on June 29, 1994, to the Serpentine Gallery
- The same day, her husband, Charles confessed his affair with Camilla on TV
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Living well is the best revenge, or so the saying goes.
For Princess Diana, revenge took the form of an off-the-shoulder, form-fitting, silk dress that made history when she wore it 30 years ago today.
On the night Prince Charles admitted to his affair with Camilla, Diana slipped on the little black number by designer Christina Stambolian to send her own message.
As Charles revealed his sin to presenter Jonathan Dimbleby in a TV interview, Diana wore the Revenge Dress – as it was quickly dubbed – for her attendance at a glitzy fundraising dinner at the Serpentine Gallery.
Charles’s conversation was hugely newsworthy. Having been asked if he had been ‘faithful and honourable’, the future King said ‘yes’, before adding: ‘Until (the marriage) became irretrievably broken down, us both having tried.’
But it was Diana’s ‘response’ in the form of her choice of dress – in a colour that the royals reserved for mourning – which made even more of an impact.
Royal writer Tina Brown even described it in her 2007 book The Diana Chronicles as her ‘f***-you dress’, and newspapers at the time agreed.
The Mail reported: ‘Charles blusters as Diana dazzles’.
Diana only wore Stambolian’s dress that night because rival designer Valentino had leaked that the Princess would be wearing one of his designs.
So in making the last-minute swap, a dress that had sat in her wardrobe gathering dust for three years became one of the most famous in history.
She had bought the dress for £900 from Stambolian’s shop after lunching with her brother Charles Spencer at her favourite restaurant, the now-closed San Lorenzo, before wandering down Beauchamp Place in Knightsbridge and walking into Stambolian’s shop.
Christina Stambolian remembered Princess Diana asking for a ‘special dress for a special occasion’ in her store back in 1991, according to Claudia Joseph’s book, Diana: A Life in Dresses.
Stambolian previously recalled how Diana was initially unsure about the revealing design – and wanted it in cream rather than black.
She said: ‘We sat down, and I drew a few sketches on a piece of paper.’
‘The dress was revealing, quite short and showed quite a bit of leg and flesh. Diana was not sure about it. She thought it was a bit risqué. She wanted everything more covered up, longer and the neck higher.
‘I told her she had good legs, and she should show them. “Why not be daring?” I said. She asked her brother [Charles] and he said: “Do what you think is right.” Finally, she said “yes” to the style then we moved on to the colour.
‘I had black in my mind, but she wanted cream. To me Diana was a black and white sort of person. I didn’t like her in the pale pinks and blues with lots of beading.’
It took two dressmakers took more than 60 hours to create the outfit.
Stambolian said she was ‘thrilled to see Diana wear it on that night of all nights.’
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Referencing Swan Lake – one of Princess Diana’s favourite plays – Ms Stambolian added: ‘She chose not to play the scene like Odette, innocent in white. She was clearly angry.
‘She played it like Odile in black. She wore bright red nail enamel, which we had never seen her do before. She was saying: “Let’s be wicked tonight.”
The dress featured an asymmetrical hem, with a flattering sheer tail which dangled from the cinched waist.
With a flirty sweetheart neckline, Diana turned heads as she paired the dress with sheer tights, stilettos and her beloved pearl and sapphire choker.
The choker originally been a brooch given to her by the Queen Mother.
Diana’s little black dress was daring in many ways.
By opting for a shorter evening look in black – a colour that the Royal Family typically reserved for mourning – the Princess was stepping away from the traditional code of dress.
The outfit represented the death of her marriage as she moved away from her life as a royal and emerged as a new woman.
While three years prior the princess had been too nervous to wear it because it was ‘too daring’, that night it was the perfect fit.
It was everything that any other royal woman wouldn’t have worn to a public event.
Photographer Mark Saunders, the author of Dicing with Di, told the 1997 documentary Diana: In Search of Happiness: ‘Everyone remembers the night of the Dimbleby interview when Prince Charles admitted an affair with Camilla Parker-Bowles and look how Diana turned up at the Serpentine Gallery.
‘I mean my God that was brilliant and I applaud her for it, I thought it was great. But that’s what Diana does, she manipulates and she’s very good at it.’
Diana’s late former stylist Anna Harvey told the 2013 documentary Princess Diana’s Dresses: The Auction, that she wanted to hold her head high in what she chose to wear that evening.
Ms Harvey said: ‘She wanted to look a million dollars. And she did.’ The stylist also wrote in Vogue that it ‘thrilled’ the Princess to make an impact.
But the decision did not come easy to Diana, according to Paul Burrell, her former butler.
He told the Channel 5 documentary, Secrets of the Royal Dressmakers: ‘She said, “I can’t go, I can’t face the world knowing what Charles has just said.
“And anyway I haven’t got anything to wear.” I went to her wardrobe room and pulled out the Christina Stambolian dress, and showed it to her.’
He also added that she was worried that the slinky dress would not fit her anymore, having bought it three years prior.
He said: ‘I zipped her up and she looked a million dollars.’
And for a couple of hours, at least, her husband’s television confession was forgotten as all eyes were on Diana.