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. 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 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 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. 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.
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