Inside Princess Diana’s ‘revenge’ trick she played on King Charles and Queen Camilla
Princess Diana successfully got her revenge on King Charles and Queen Camilla, days after he admitted he had been unfaithful to her with Camilla when they were married. Then-Prince Charles and Diana tied the knot on July 29 1981, and while at first, they appeared to be the perfect royal couple cracks eventually began to show.
The couple announced their separation in 1992 but did not officially divorce until 1996, two years after Charles gave an explosive interview to Jonathan Dimbleby. On June 29, 1994, the now-King confessed in his TV appearance that he and Camilla had an affair, leading Diana to step out wearing her iconic little black dress on July 3 of that year, thirty years ago today.
Diana had originally bought the dress back in 1991 but at first considered it too daring to wear, however for a dinner at the Serpentine Gallery in Kensington three years later she decided it was the right time to bring it out of the closet. The stunning dress stood out for its plunging neckline, thigh split and off-the-shoulder design, and certainly went against royal protocol for how women were expected to dress. Diana’s former stylist Anna Harvey said of the famous dress: “She wanted to look a million dollars… and she did.”
The look was designed by Christina Stambolian for the late Princess of Wales and took two dressmakers 60 hours to construct. Diana bought the dress at the designer’s shop for £900, and its asymmetrical hem and cinched waist helped to highlight her stunning figure. In Claudia Joseph’s book ‘Diana: A Life in Dresses’ Ms Stambolian explained: “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.
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“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 that 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.”
Diana accessorised the dress with sheer black tights, stilettos and her beloved sapphire and pearl choker, which had once been a brooch belonging to the Queen Mother.
The designer Ms 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.'”
