The black silk evening gown that Diana, Princess of Wales, wore to the Serpentine Gallery in 1994, the dress that entered fashion history as the ‘Revenge Dress’, will be sold at Sotheby’s in New York on 9th December, its first appearance at auction since 1997. Designed by the Greek couturier Christina Stambolian, it carries an estimate of approximately €130,000 to €260,000 and will be offered during the auction house’s Luxury Week.

Diana wore the strapless, figure-hugging dress on the evening of 29th June 1994, arriving at a Vanity Fair fundraising dinner at the Serpentine, one of London’s best-known galleries, to a wall of camera flashes. The image was transmitted around the world within minutes. What gave it meaning was the timing. That same evening, Prince Charles, from whom she had been separated for close to two years, admitted on national television that he had been unfaithful. The revelations had leaked days earlier, so Diana knew that whatever she wore would be read as a response.

She had considered staying away but attended, changing her outfit at the last minute and setting aside a Valentino gown in favour of the Stambolian dress, with its asymmetric hem and chiffon train. According to her stylist at the time, Anna Harvey, Diana simply “wanted to look a million dollars”.

A dress three years in the waiting

Diana had owned the dress for three years before that night, having judged it too daring to wear in public. Stambolian later compared the princess’s choice of black to Odile, the black swan in Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake, a deliberate turn away from the innocence associated with white. She finished the look with black heels, red nail varnish, a clutch and a choker made from an antique diamond and sapphire brooch that had been a wedding gift from the Queen Mother.

The gown is a version of the little black dress, the silhouette Coco Chanel introduced in 1926 as a break from the fashion conventions of the day. In the decades since Diana wore it, the term ‘revenge dressing’ has entered the fashion vocabulary as shorthand for clothing chosen to project confidence and independence, and the look has been reproduced repeatedly for screen and exhibition.

“Fashion can be a language when words fail or are simply not enough. Princess Diana understood that instinctively,” said Morgane Halimi, Sotheby’s Global Head of Handbags and Fashion. “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.”

From the 1997 sale to a global tour

The dress was last sold in June 1997, when Diana auctioned 79 of her gowns to raise money for cancer and Aids charities, a sale that Prince William is credited with suggesting. A numbered copy of the original catalogue, signed by both the princess and the designer, will be offered alongside it. Part of the proceeds this time will go to NHS Lothian Charity on behalf of the Royal Edinburgh Hospital.

The buyers from that 1997 sale are now the sellers. “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,” the consignor said. “Thirty years on, you can say the words anywhere in the world and everyone knows exactly which dress you mean.”

After the 1997 sale the dress was shown at charity events in Scotland and later at Paisley Museum, before dropping out of public view for close to three decades.

Where to see it

The dress will go on public display at Sotheby’s London from 18th to 24th September, during London Fashion Week, before travelling to Hong Kong and Geneva. It will then move to New York, where it will be shown at Sotheby’s Breuer Building from 2nd December ahead of the sale on 9th December.

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Main photo by Campbell Addy for Sothebys