Princess Diana’s famous ‘revenge dress’ expected to sell for £220,000 at auction

Few items of clothing are as famous as the “revenge” dress worn by the late Diana, Princess of Wales - and now, it is expected to sell for up to £220,000.

The dress will go under the hammer later this year, and will be on display in London next month – over 30 years since it first made headlines.

Diana made waves when she was photographed wearing the black silk gown in 1994, on the same night her then-husband the Prince of Wales publicly admitted his infidelity on national television.

The black silk gown was designed by Christina Stambolian (Martin Keene/PA)

Designed by Christina Stambolian, the dress quickly became a fashion statement after it was worn by Diana during a Vanity Fair fundraising dinner at the Serpentine Gallery in London.

Diana also turned heads with the outfit as it broke traditional expectations of royal dress with its colour, its plunging neckline and its above-the-knee hemline.

The dress will be up for auction at Sotheby’s in New York in December as part of its luxury week and is estimated to sell for between 150,000 and 300,000 dollars (£110,000 to £220,000).

It marks its first sale since June 1997 when Diana sold 79 of her dresses to raise funds to benefit cancer and Aids charities.

Diana’s ‘revenge dress’ hopes to sell for £220,000 (Campbell Addy/Sotheby’s)

Part of the proceeds from the sale will be donated to NHS Lothian Charity on behalf of the Royal Edinburgh Hospital, which is dedicated to funding extra care, equipment and projects.

It will also be sold alongside a copy of the original catalogue, numbered and signed by Diana and Greek designer Stambolian, crediting the Prince of Wales with the idea of the charity fundraiser.

The “revenge dress” will embark on a global exhibition tour ahead of its live sale on December 9 - stopping at Sotheby’s locations Hong Kong, Geneva and New York where it will be on display.

The public can also view the dress in London and it will be on display at Sotheby’s auction house in the capital from 18 September to 24 September.

The dress was designed by Christina Stambolian (Campbell Addy/Sotheby’s)

Diana originally wore the dress with a choker made from a royal brooch, a black clutch and black pumps, and the elegant ensemble has been widely hailed for inspiring decades of fashion and popular culture.

The consignor, who bought the dress during its original sale, said: “My late husband and I knew that this dress was something special.

“Princess Diana was walking into the worst night of her life and you would never know it to look at her.

“It went from a cocktail dress to a statement in the time it took to photograph her.

“Thirty years on, you can say the words anywhere in the world and everyone knows exactly which dress you mean.”

Diana originally wore the dress with a royal jewel, a black clutch and black pumps (Campbell Addy/Sotheby’s)

Morgane Halimi, Sotheby’s Global Head of Handbags & Fashion, said: “Fashion can be a language when words fail or are simply not enough.

“Princess Diana understood that instinctively.

“What makes this dress extraordinary is not merely that it was worn by the princess, nor that its appearance at the Serpentine event made headlines around the world. It is what it communicated.”

Halimi praised Princess Diana for turning the dress into a “powerful message” during one of the most “scrutinised and emotionally charged episodes of her life”.

“What became a global viral moment – long before social media made the term mundane – also gave licence to anyone, but especially women, to use fashion beyond adornment and much more intentionally and meaningfully: as a shield, a weapon or both,” she added.

“What has endured across the decades is not the scandal surrounding that evening, but Princess Diana’s show of confidence and self-possession.

“She walked into a moment in which so much of her story was being told for her and, through what she chose to wear, reclaimed the narrative for herself.”