From the fabulous ‘Elvis Dress’ to the velvet gown she wore dancing with Travolta – what happened next to Diana’s fabulous dresses? And where in the world are they now?

WHEN the first dress that Jacques Azagury designed for Princess Diana broke records late last year as the most expensive of her gowns to sell at auction, the couturier was travelling around India.

The black ballerina-length evening gown, embroidered with blue stars, and measuring 37 inches across the bust, 33 inches around the waist and 34 inches across the hips, raised £790,000 at Julien’s Auctions, in Los Angeles. for the New York Historical Society.

‘Amazing result,’ he told MailOnline. ‘I wish it had belonged to me!!!

‘ But that dress does exemplify the era and it is the very beginning of “the story” after all.’

The dress was one of 79 gowns that the Princess sold at auction on 25 June 1997, in one of the most anticipated auctions of the 20th century.

A total of 1,100 people, including museums, fashion connoisseurs, haute couture collectors and Diana fans crammed into Christie’s Park Avenue auction house in Manhattan, to bid for their moment in history.

Within two-and-a-half hours, the auction had raised £1.96 million for Diana’s chosen charities: the Royal Marsden Hospital Cancer Fund and the AIDS Crisis Trust. Another £2 million was raised from the sale of catalogues and fundraisers.

Now, 27 years later, I have tracked down 68 of Diana’s most iconic outfits to museums around the globe…although mystery surrounds the whereabouts of the Revenge Dress, which appears to have disappeared without a trace. Here are the highlights…

SANTIAGO, CHILE

The Grace Kelly Dress

When Diana wore her Catherine Walker pale blue silk chiffon strapless gown and matching stole to the Cannes Film Festival on 15 May 1987, she sparked comparisons to movie star Grace Kelly – later Princess Grace of Monaco – the star of Alfred Hitchcock’s 1955 classic To Catch A Thief.

Diana and Prince Charles were attending a gala in honour of the actor Sir Alec Guinness, but Diana was secretly dating James Hewitt at the time, a dashing former cavalry officer in the British Army.

Diana loved the dress and went on to wear it for the Leicester Square film première of Superman IV: Quest for Peace on 23 July 1987, and a Royal Gala Performance of Miss Saigon at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane on 19 September 1989.

She also chose it for a 1987 shoot with the late photographer Terence Donovan – the image is on the wall of the National Portrait Gallery.

However, Diana fans were appalled when an American cable TV station, WE TV, bought the Grace Kelly gown at Christie’s for £42,526, along with two other dresses, and took it on a ‘Dresses to Die For’ shopping centre tour.

The tour was halted following Diana’s death – but the dresses were then sent out under a new title, ‘Legacy of Love’.

The Grace Kelly Gown was finally sold on 8 May 2011, by Julien’s Auctions in Beverly Hills, California, for £114,072.75, to the Fundación Museo de la Moda in Santiago, Chile.

The One-Shouldered Gown

Given to Diana by Vogue fashion editor Anna Harvey as a gift, Diana first wore her one-shouldered Hachi gown for a gala at the Hilton Hotel in Melbourne on 16 April 1983, during her first official tour of the Commonwealth.

It was a move that sparked critical acclaim from fashion editors.

Until then the princess had become known for her fairytale appearance, wearing frills, flounces, lace, and ruffles. But by the time she went to Australia as a young mother and media superstar, she was exploring sleeker dresses that emphasised her broad shoulders.

The dress, which was embroidered with silver bugle beads, was one of Diana’s favourites: she wore it repeatedly over the next six years before it was consigned to the back of her wardrobe.

On 4 June that year, she chose the gown while accompanying Prince Charles to a ball at Broadlands, home of the late Lord Mountbatten, where Charles and Diana had spent part of their honeymoon.

Two days later, she wore it for the James Bond film première of Octopussy, where she met 007 himself, Roger Moore.

She later wore the dress for a gala at the National Gallery in Washington DC, on 11 November 1985; the première of Licence to Kill on 13 June 1989; her stepmother Raine’s 60th birthday party on 9 September 1989; and the Vanity Fair fashion shoot with Mario Testino the month before her death.

The Mail on Sunday’s You magazine bought the dress at the 1997 Christie’s Auction for £45,173. 

It became a prize in a competition won by farmer’s wife Margaret Thompson, 53, a lifelong royalist from Yorkshire.

Devastated by Diana’s death, she deposited it in a bank vault before later deciding to sell.

The gown was re-auctioned in on 13 December 2001 for £49,777.20, by Doyle’s in New York, and was the first dress bought by the Fundación Museo de la Moda, based in Santiago, Chile.

TOKYO, JAPAN

The Diplomatic Dress

Japanese designer Gnyuki ‘Yuki’ Torimaru was introduced to Diana through a close friend, who knew that she was going on a state visit to Japan in 1986.

Yuki presented her with a choice of three dresses – in red, white and blue, the colours of the UK flag – and she chose the royal blue number to match her engagement ring.

Yuki, who was inspired by the designs of Spanish designer Fortuny and Russian illustrator Erté, spent the whole tour keeping an eye out for the dress, which was decorated with blue bugle beads at the neckline and waist.

However, to his surprise, the princess had saved it for her final – and most important – engagement: a banquet with Emperor Hirohito.

She teamed the dress at the 12 May dinner with a sapphire and diamond headband made from jewels which she had had reset from the Saudi Suite, setting a trend which was much copied.

After Diana’s death, Yuki, who also designed for Bianca Jagger and Jerry Hall, said: ‘When she died, the days grew darker.’

Born in Miyazaki, Japan in 1937, Yuki studied architecture before becoming a textile engineer.

He moved to London in 1964 and attended the London College of Fashion. After graduating in 1966, he trained with some of the great couturiers of the day: Louis Feraud, Sir Norman Hartnell and Pierre Cardin.

He launched his own designer label collection, Yuki, at Harvey Nichols in 1972.

His diplomatic dress was auctioned by Christie’s at their 1997 sale. It was bought by New York art dealer James Kojima for £15,218, on behalf of his cousin Akihiko Kojima, principal of the Mejiro Fashion & Art College.

The Red Cross Gown

As patron of The British Red Cross Youth and Vice President of the British Red Cross Society, Diana was guest of honour at a Luciano Pavarotti concert on 8 May 1995 at the Royal Albert Hall, in aid of the Red Cross 125 Birthday Appeal.

She chose a Catherine Walker military-style gown with a black Hussar-style bodice and pleated red silk-crepe skirt, trimmed with a soutache braid and rouleaux at the waist.

The dress was sold at the 1997 Christie’s auction for £22,135, to New York art dealer James Kojima, who bought it on behalf of his cousin Akihiko Kojima, principal of the Mejiro Fashion & Art College Tokyo, Japan.

The purchase was made to celebrate the college’s 60th anniversary.

NEWBRIDGE, IRELAND

The Mughal dress

Made for her 1992 state visit to India, where she was memorably photographed alone at the Taj Mahal, Diana’s embroidered pink slubbed silk strapless dress and matching bolero was embroidered with pink and white flowers, and decorated with green sequins, star-shaped sequins, gold glass beads and gold braid, echoing Mughal embroidery motifs.

The inspiration came from the lid of an Indian inlaid marquetry box found in a London market. Diana did not wear the dress publicly on the tour – the only photo of Diana in the dress was taken by Lord Snowdon for the Christie’s auction catalogue. 

The dress sold for £37,233 to Maureen Rorech, who took it around the world in the Dresses for Humanity tour. However, the tour ran into trouble with creditors and this dress was confiscated for five months until the debt was repaid.

The dress was auctioned on 19 March 2013 by Kerry Taylor Auctions and was bought for £68,750 by William Doyle, owner of the Museum of Style Icons in Newbridge, County Kildare, Ireland, where it is on permanent display.

NEW YORK, USA

The Tulip Gown

As guest of honour at a banquet hosted by President Ibrahim Babangida and First Lady Maryam in Lagos, Nigeria, on 15 March 1990, Diana chose to reflect the colours of the national flag in a white silk chiffon halter-neck gown, printed with purple tulips and green leaves.

The dress, with its low back, folded bodice and long streamer down the back, was bought for £15,218 at the 1997 Christie’s auction by Veronica Hearst, the widow of high-flying media scion Randolph Hearst. A friend of the Princess, Hearst later donated the dress to the Metropolitan Museum of Art In New York.

LONDON, ENGLAND

The Elvis gown

Embroidered with 20,000 pearls and white sequins, the Catherine Walker sheath and matching bolero that Diana wore to the British Fashion Awards at London’s Royal Albert Hall on 17 October 1989 sparked comparisons to ‘the King’ – which is to say, Elvis himself.

Diana herself dubbed the gown her ‘Elvis Dress’, because of the upturned collar. She wore it on an official visit to Hong Kong on 10 November 1989, for the opening of the Hong Kong Culture Centre, teaming it with the Queen Mary’s Lover’s Knot Tiara.

She later sore the dress – minus the bolero – for a state banquet hosted by Hungarian President Arpad Goncz at the Parliament Building in Budapest, on 8 May 1990.

‘Whenever I saw the princess in this dress, I could not help but feel that it would not be possible for anyone else ever to wear this dress and bolero,’ the designer said afterwards.

‘She shone in the dress and the dress shone around her in a shimmering column of glistening pearls.’

The dress was bought for £90,827 at the Christie’s auction by the American memorabilia company The Franklin Mint, which created a portrait doll of Diana wearing a replica of the dress. They donated the dress to London’s Victoria & Albert Museum.

The Travolta Gown

This blue velvet Victor Edelstein gown became one of Diana’s iconic dresses after she wore it dancing with John Travolta on 9 November 1985, at a state dinner hosted by President Ronald Reagan and his wife Nancy at the White House.

She teamed the dress, that night, with a sapphire and pearl choker converted from a brooch given to her by The Queen Mother.

Travolta had not been invited to take a guest but, when Nancy Reagan took him aside during the banquet and explained that Diana wanted to dance with him, he understood the reason why.

At midnight, heart pounding, he crossed the floor and asked her if she wanted to dance. She turned around and she did that look that she did so, so beautifully,’ he recalled, ‘and I asked if she would care to dance.

‘She said she’d love to and we danced for 20 minutes to a medley of “Grease” and “Saturday Night Fever”.

I was on cloud nine. She has great rhythm. We did spins and turns. We did a kind of modern foxtrot and she followed me very well.

‘“Maybe someday we’ll get to do this in a less-watched situation,’ I said near the end. “That would be great,” she replied.’

The dress was one of Diana’s favourites. She wore it to the annual banquet of the Asian Affairs Society at the Savoy Hotel on 5 February 1986; on a state visit to Vienna, Austria, on 15 April 1986, to watch a performance of the London Philharmonic Orchestra at the Musikverein; on a state visit to Bonn, Germany on 2 November 1987; for an official portrait for the Royal Hussars by artist Israel Zohar in 1990; and to the Royal Opera House on 3 November 1991 when she met Vivienne Westwood.

Six years later, she pulled it out of her closet to wear for her official portrait by Lord Snowdon and teamed it with the same necklace she had worn 12 years earlier.

It has changed hands many times since. Maureen Rorech bought the gown for £133,835 – the highest price ever raised by Christie’s for a garment – beating the previous record of £120,709.71 for the white suit that John Travolta wore in Saturday Night Fever.

She eventually went bankrupt, and the dresses were seized as collateral.

This particular dress was resold by Kerry Taylor Auctions on 19 March 2013 for £250,000 to a man as a gift for his wife. The auction house sold the same dress again on 9 December 2019, for £275,000, to Historic Royal Palaces.

LOS ANGELES, USA

The Gala gown

When Diana attended the private viewing and reception for the Christie’s auction in London on 2 June 1997, she chose a Catherine Walker pale blue guipure lace dress, embroidered with silver diamante. 

She was photographed with her late stepmother Raine, Comtesse De Chambrun, formerly Countess Raine Spencer, and designer Catherine Walker.

Australian Renae Plant later bought this dress from a charity for The Princess & The Platypus Foundation, and it is now on display in her Princess Diana Museum in LA.

The Mint Green suit

Diana loved her mint green Chanel suit. She wore it on Valentine’s Day, 1997, to open a new renal unit at London’s Great Ormond Street Hospital, and again while shopping in New York on 23 June 1997, teaming it with a white Chanel bag.

She was in the city for the Christie’s auction – however, that shopping trip was the final time she would wear the label: within three months she was dead.

When Diana’s older sister Lady Sarah McCorquodale was clearing Diana’s wardrobe, she gifted the suit to the personal valet of her late father, Lord Spencer.

The valet had been helping her categorise it, for his wife. When his wife died in 2018, he sold it and it ended up in a charity store. It is now owned by The Princess & The Platypus Foundation, and it is on display in the interactive 3-D Princess Diana Museum.

MISSING IN ACTION…

The Revenge Dress – last seen Bridge of Weir, Scotland

In September 1991, Designer Christina Stambolian was working at her boutique in Beauchamp Place, on the other side of the road from Caroline Charles and Bruce Oldfield, when Princess Diana strolled in with her brother Earl Spencer.

The siblings had been out for lunch that Saturday at Diana’s favourite restaurant, San Lorenzo, and were meandering back towards Kensington Palace, when they decided to do some shopping.

That shopping trip led to the creation of one of the most talked-about dresses in history: the black silk crepe cocktail gown with an asymmetric ruched bodice and side sash, which Diana wore on 29 June 1994, the night that Prince Charles admitted having an affair with Camilla Parker Bowles on national television.

Combining the dress with her favourite sapphire, pearl and diamond choker, which matched her engagement ring, and scarlet nails, Diana stepped out at a Vanity Fair dinner at the Serpentine Gallery in London’s Hyde Park.

Her gown was christened by the American press the ‘Revenge Dress’.

The Telegraph newspaper dubbed it ‘the pièce de resistance’, describing it as ‘the brave, wicked, historic little “Serpentine Cocktail”, possibly the most strategic dress ever worn by a woman in modern times’.

The £900 dress went under the hammer at Christie’s four years later and was bought for £44,511 by Scotsman Graeme Mackenzie and his wife Briege, who owned the Body Shop franchise in Scotland.

They exhibited it to raise money for Scottish charities. After the princess’s death, the couple, from Bridge of Wier in Renfrewshire, wrapped it in tissue paper and put it in a bank vault. It has not been seen since.

The Ballerina – last seen Christies, New York

This was a favourite of the Princess – and, thanks to the recent sale, is the most expensive of Diana’s dresses ever to have sold at auction. 

But the buyer and its new location are unknown. 

She wore the black ballerina-length evening gown, embroidered with blue stars, to a mayoral dinner at the Palazzo Vecchio, in Florence, Italy, on December 11, 1985.

She later wore it for a performance by the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra at The Orpheum Theatre, in Vancouver, Canada, on May 5, the following year.

It was one of the gowns auctioned by the princess at Christie’s on June 25, 1997, two months before her death, and was sold to People magazine for £15,910.

They donated it to the New York Historical Society in 2015, which has just sold it for £790,000, to an unidentified buyer.

Designer Jacques Azagury first met Diana when he was showing his 1985 autumn/winter New Romantics Collection at the London’s Hyde Park Hotel – now the Mandarin Oriental.

Vogue fashion editor Anna Harvey tapped him on the shoulder and said: ‘Jacques, I would like you to meet somebody.’

‘I turned around and there she was straight in front of me,’ he recalled, ‘which kind of threw me.

‘Then literally we were just talking. She had this magic of making you feel comfortable and at home within seconds. Whilst I was talking to her, she was looking at a dress, which I wasn’t aware of.

‘Then, two or three weeks later we got a call from the Palace saying: “Princess Diana would like to visit your atelier. Would that be ok?” And we were, of course, absolutely delighted.

Jacques and his sister Solange were then invited to Kensington Palace to discuss the dress – which was made in Jakob Schlaepher fabric.

The Engagement Blouse – last seen Julien’s Auctions, Los Angeles

The phone call from Vogue’s beauty editor Felicity Clark came on 28 January 1981. She told them she was doing a shoot for the magazine on English Roses and wanted something ‘very romantic’ for ‘someone very famous’.

Hanging in their studio was the perfect garment: a pale pink silk chiffon blouse with a soft floaty collar and pink silk satin bow.

They sent it round the corner to Vogue, and photographer Lord Snowdon, then divorced from Princess Margaret, shot Diana in the blouse for the feature on ‘Upcoming Beauties’.

The engagement was announced on the day of the magazine’s release and Diana chose the image for her official engagement photograph.

In their book A Dress for Diana, David and Elizabeth Emanuel wrote, ‘It was this blouse that was hanging up in our studio when we suddenly received the phone call from Vogue requesting something which had a high neck and was very romantic.

It was only later that we discovered that the blouse had been worn by Lady Diana (whose sisters both worked at Vogue).

The blouse was sold for £27,500 by Kerry Taylor Auctions on 8 June 2010, to the Museum of Style Icons in Newbridge, County Kildare, Ireland. 

They then sold it at Julien’s Auctions on 14 December 2023 for £300,000 to an unknown buyer.

• Diana: A Life in Dresses by Claudia Joseph is published by ACC Art Books for £40.

 

DIANA’S DRESSES AROUND THE WORLD

Fundación Museo de la Moda, Santiago, Chile

The Back to the Future Gown

The Bahrain Day Dress The Bahrain Evening Gown

The Bangkok Ballgown

The Black Ballgown The Blue Velvet Gown The Burgundy Velvet Gown

The Cocktail Dress

The Cocktail Gown The Crushed Velvet Gown

The Debutante Dress The Fairytale Ballgown The French Gown The Grace Kelly Gown The Grey Gown The India Dress The Ivory Gown The Madame Grès Gown

The One-Shouldered Gown

The Petal Pink Ballet Dress

The Ruffled Suit The Scottish Gown The Spencer House Gown

The White Lace Gown The White Silk Chiffon Gown

The Royal Ceremonial Dress Collection, Historic Royal Palaces, London

The Black Velvet Ballgown

The Braemar Dress

The Cherry Blossom Gown

The Honeymoon Suit

The Liza Minelli Gown

The Mermaid Dress

The New Zealand Ensemble

The Red Suit

The Stately Gown

The Tartan Suit

The Travolta Gown

The Tuxedo Dress

The Victoria & Albert Museum, London, England

The Elvis Dress

The Princess Diana Museum, Los Angeles

The Black Polka Dot Number

The Burgundy Dress

The Gala Gown

The Mint Green Suit

The Patrick Demarchelier Gown

The Peach Polka Dot Dress

The Pink Suit

The Red Coat

The Metropolitan Museum, New York

The Tulip Gown

The Mejiro Fashion & Art College, Tokyo, Japan

The Diplomatic Dress

The Red Cross Gown

The Terence Donovan Gown

The Museum of Style Icons, Newbridge, Co Kildare, Ireland

The Mughal Dress

The Pat Kerr Private Royal Collection, USA

The Spanish Dancer Dress