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The dress that Diana, Princess of Wales wore one September evening in 1994 would have been memorable for its design alone – black, fitted, off-the-shoulder, skintight and short. However, it has another distinction, of defining a whole category of fashion – what has since become known as “revenge dressing”.
Worn by Diana the same night Charles would reveal his infidelity on TV, the dress was quickly labelled “the revenge dress” by the media. It has its own Wikipedia page, with the same title.
Now, for the first time since 1997, it is up for auction. In December, Sotheby’s will sell the garment, designed by Christina Stambolian, with an estimate of £110,000 to £220,000. This month it will go on display at the auction house in London, before travelling to Hong Kong, Geneva and New York, where it will be sold.
Sotheby’s global head of handbags and fashion, Morgane Halimi, says the dress is in very select company, in that its legacy goes beyond design.
“It occupies a unique place in fashion history because it represents one of those very rare moments when a garment transcends fashion to become part of culture history.” This buzz around the design has been there since the 1990s. When Diana sold the dress herself as part of a charity auction in 1997, it raised £39,098, close to £100,000 in today’s money. The family who bought it has owned it since then.
Although it was worn in the infancy of the internet, the revenge dress chimes with terms familiar online. The dress was a viral moment, and an example of Diana controlling the narrative.
“She created a look that no one had ever seen her present before,” says Halimi. “That allowed her to show her resolve to stand up for herself and reclaim the narrative of a story that would have been heartbreaking for anyone in her situation.”
The dress contrasted with how the public was used to seeing her. She chose it over the more traditional gown by Valentino she had planned to wear. Stambolian later compared it to the black swan Odile in Swan Lake.
“She chose not to play the scene like Odette, innocent in white,” the designer told Harper’s Bazaar in 2022. “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.’”
If the Stambolian dress is shorthand for revenge dressing now, Halimi says Diana’s choice actually sits in a tradition. “People have long used clothing to signal confidence, transformation or a new chapter in their lives,” she says. “What Diana did was crystallise that idea in a single image that the world immediately understood. The phrase ‘revenge dressing’ entered the cultural lexicon because of this dress.”
In the nearly 30 years since her death, Diana has remained a fashion reference for younger generations. In 2013, Rihanna gave her seal of approval, telling Glamour: “Every look was right. She was gangsta with her clothes.”
There are also copious Instagram accounts dedicated to the princess’s style, including the aptly titled @ladydirevengelooks, which has attracted more than 100,000 followers since it was set up in 2018.
Part of this ability to appeal to younger people was due to Diana being ahead of her time in her fashion choices. “Many of the qualities we admire in contemporary style icons – the ability to communicate identity, confidence and individuality through dress – were qualities Diana embodied decades earlier,” says Halimi.
“Importantly, people are not simply inspired by what she wore; they are inspired by what her fashion choices represented.”
