Thirty years ago, Princess Diana broke royal protocol after Prince Charles admitted he was unfaithful with Camilla Parker-Bowles during an explosive TV interview.
Princess Diana used an unexpected tactic to deliver a “revenge” blow to then Prince Charles after he admitted to an affair with Camilla.
Princess Diana daringly broke royal protocol when she emerged from a car wearing a revealing off-the-shoulder, short black dress after Prince Charles admitted he was unfaithful on June, 29 1994. Diana had bought the dress in 1991 but considered it too daring to wear at the time. But in a historic move, she wore it for the first time at a 1994 dinner at the Serpentine Gallery in Kensington Gardens – the same night Prince Charles confessed his affair with Camilla Parker-Bowles to Jonathan Dimbleby during an infamous TV interview.
The dazzling piece became known as the “revenge” dress. Undoubtedly chic, it had a plunging neckline and thigh-high split. Diana’s former stylist Anna Harvey said of the dress: “She wanted to look a million dollars… and she did.” The famous number was designed by Christina Stambolian for the Princess of Wales and took two dressmakers 60-hours to create the outfit.
The dress, which Diana bought from Stambolian’s shop for £900, featured an asymmetrical hem and a cinched waist. She paired the dress with stilettos and her beloved pearl and sapphire choker – originally a brooch given to her by the Queen Mother. And according to the Mail Online, Diana only wore Stambolian’s dress that night because rival designer Valentino had leaked that the Princess would be showcasing one of his designs.
Christina Stambolian said the Princess wanted 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.”
Stambolian has since said how she was “thrilled to see Diana wear it on that night of all nights” and referencing Swan Lake, she 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.”
Photographer Mark Saunders, the author of Dicing with Di, told the 1997 documentary Diana: In Search of Happiness, said of the moment she wore the dress: “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.”
However, Diana’s former butler Paul Burrell claims the decision to wear the risk-taking dress did not come easy to the Princess. Speaking to Channel 5 documentary, Secrets of the Royal Dressmakers, he revealed: “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, adding: I zipped her up and she looked a million dollars.”
