How Diana’s revenge dress signalled a turning point in her life

The Independent

It was 1994 when Princess Diana strutted into the Serpentine Gallery looking like the Royal Family's worst nightmare and everyone else’s dream. It’s hard to imagine a fashion moment more impactful than her little black revenge dress. She wore it the evening that Prince Charles admitted to the world that he had been cheating on her. For this video we spoke to, Eloise Moran author of The Lady Di Look Book, who says black would have been a bit of a no go colour for the royal family. But once you’ve been cheated on you should probably be allowed to wear whatever you want. And according to Moran her dress sense definitely evolved post divorce as she traded the frills and bows for mini skirts, shoulder pads, red nail varnish, high heels and athleisure in her 30s.

Transcript

00:00Revenge is a dress best served smoking hot.

00:04Imagine you're Princess Diana and your husband, Prince Charles, has been cheating on you.

00:09Today is the day he admits to the world what he did.

00:12What do you do?

00:13Well, you attend the event you were already going to attend at the Serpentine Gallery,

00:16wearing the hottest dress in your wardrobe.

00:19When you arrive, you park, I don't know, about 100 metres from the venue

00:22and you strut towards those cameras which you know have been waiting for you.

00:26Looking like the most seductive royal this country has ever seen.

00:29Just so that everyone knows that that marriage breakdown was a hymnal.

00:33This was a dress that had been sitting in Diana's wardrobe unworn for three years.

00:37When she had it designed by the Greek designer Christina Stambolian,

00:41she was requesting something for a special occasion.

00:43However, she was hesitant about the relatively short length and low neckline.

00:47She also wanted the dress to be cream initially,

00:49but Stambolian said she imagined her as a black and white sort of person.

00:53I think she really loved wearing the colour black,

00:55but it was a bit of a no-go while she was married

00:57because it typically, and historically, it was a colour of mourning.

01:01Three years went by and she hadn't worn it.

01:03I was very disappointed, Stambolian recalled.

01:06Then I realised she had been waiting for the right occasion.

01:08Diana was initially going to wear a Valentino dress to the Serpentine event.

01:12But they had put out a premature statement saying

01:15she's going to be wearing a dress, a dress from us.

01:19She was so irked that they did that because she loved the element of surprise.

01:24Instead, she wore what came to be known as the Revenge Dress.

01:28Many say that this dress marked a change in Diana's outfits post-divorce.

01:32The heels got higher, the hemlines got shorter.

01:35Diana always knew what she was doing.

01:37She learned, I think, really early on to communicate through her clothes

01:41because she couldn't really have much of a voice.

01:44She was winning over women everywhere in the 90s

01:48because she was just this fabulous divorcee.

01:51She seemed to go from wearing frills and bows pre-infidelity

01:54to fearless, unofficial queen who could speak for herself.

01:57Although I think we can all see that sometimes outfits speak louder than words.

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