Princess Diana’s iconic ‘revenge dress’ returns to auction in December

Princess Diana’s black “revenge dress” is returning to auction nearly three decades after she sold it for charity, with Sotheby’s estimating one of the best-known pieces from her wardrobe at $150,000 to $300,000.

The Christina Stambolian dress will be offered in New York on 9 December during Sotheby’s Luxury Week. It has not changed hands at auction since Diana included it in the sale of 79 dresses at Christie’s in New York in June 1997.

Diana wore the black silk crepe cocktail dress to a Vanity Fair fundraising dinner at London’s Serpentine Gallery on 29 June 1994.

That evening, ITV broadcast a documentary in which Prince Charles, now King Charles III, acknowledged that he had been unfaithful during their marriage.

Asked by journalist Jonathan Dimbleby whether he had been faithful, Charles replied that he had been “until it became irretrievably broken down, us both having tried.”

Charles and Diana had separated in December 1992.

News of Charles’s admission had leaked before the broadcast. About 13 million people watched the program in Britain, according to CNN. Diana nevertheless attended the Serpentine event in a dress that was markedly different from the more conservative outfits associated with her earlier royal appearances.

She had owned the Stambolian dress for about three years but had not worn it publicly because she considered it too daring, the designer later said.

Diana paired it with black shoes and a clutch, red nail polish and a pearl choker centered on a diamond and sapphire brooch that had been given to her as a wedding present by Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother.

Her stylist at the time, Anna Harvey, later offered a less elaborate explanation for the choice. Diana “wanted to look a million dollars,” Harvey said.

Photographs of Diana arriving at the gallery rapidly competed with coverage of Charles’s television interview. The dress soon acquired the “revenge dress” nickname, although Diana herself did not publicly describe it that way.

Three years later, Diana put the Stambolian dress into the Christie’s charity auction of 79 pieces from her wardrobe. The 25 June 1997 sale raised money for cancer and AIDS charities. Contemporary reports put the price paid for the dress at £39,098, or about $65,000 at the time.

It was bought by Scottish charity supporter Briege Mackenzie and her husband. The couple said at the time that they hoped to use the dress to raise money for Children 1st, a Scottish charity. It subsequently appeared at fundraising events in Scotland and was displayed at Paisley Museum before disappearing from public view for almost three decades.

The current consignor is the original 1997 buyer. Sotheby’s quoted her as saying she had decided to sell after the death of her husband.

The December lot will also include a numbered copy of the 1997 auction catalogue signed by Diana and Stambolian. The catalogue credits Prince William, who was 14 at the time of the sale, with suggesting that his mother auction some of her dresses for charity.

Part of the proceeds from the new sale will be donated to NHS Lothian Charity on behalf of the Royal Edinburgh Hospital in Scotland.

Before the auction, Sotheby’s will put the dress on public display in London from 18 to 24 September, Hong Kong from 1 to 15 October and Geneva from 6 to 11 November. It will be shown in New York from 2 to 8 December before the sale the following day.

The estimate comes after sharp increases in prices for some pieces from Diana’s wardrobe. In December 2023, a black and blue Jacques Azagury evening dress she wore in the 1980s sold at Julien’s Auctions for $1.148 million, more than 11 times its estimate and a record for a Diana dress.

Whether the Stambolian dress reaches anything close to that price will be decided in December. Its appeal to collectors rests on unusually clear provenance, Diana’s single documented public appearance in it and the connection between the dress and one of the most closely photographed episodes of her life.