Lot 2 - The "Divorce" Dress

This little black silk crepe and Christina Stambolian cocktail dress wowed the world when Diana wore it to the Serpentine Gallery on the evening a Jonathan Dimbleby interview with Prince Charles aired. The dress was thereafter known by several unattractive and attitudinal nicknames, including the Divorce Dress, the Revenge Dress and the “Up-Yours, Charles” dress. Diana’s brother related after her death that he had been with her when she purchased it years before the night she wore it, and Paul Burrell, her butler, also later recounted that she had actually planned to wear a more somber, modest, navy cocktail dress with white cuffs. It sold as Lot 2 in the Christie’s auction for $74,000.00.

Another rarely copied outfit, this sophisticated and asymmetrically hemmed cocktail dress was the shortest outfit worn publicly by Diana to that date, and made headlines around the world, both when worn by Diana, and when Franklin Mint copied it (upper left) for the People’s Princess vinyl wardrobe doll as the "Princess of Glamour LE 10,000", where it was announced on the Roseanne Barr talkshow by Lynda Rae Resnick, owner of Franklin Mint. Although it featured on a number of other dolls, there is only one other replica maker, the eBay seller formerly known as Hisodoll, who was known to have copied it for this doll (bottom left.)

It features an off-shoulder, deeply plunging neckline, ostensibly held up by brief off the shoulder sleeves. It finishes with a flourish of black chiffon scarf that is part train, part scarf, part overskirt, completely diva-ish and was for a long time my favourite outfit/doll/replica.