Diana dresses that made them gasp go on show
BY ALAN HAMILTON
WHEN Diana, Princess of Wales, walked into a Unesco
charity function at Versailles
in 1994, the audience gasped in admiration at the
tall blonde woman in the Catherine
Walker black velvet halterneck dress, a glittering
bead trim framing her face.
"We have had the Sun King here; now we have the Sun
Princess," Pierre Cardin, the
French designer, exclaimed.
Now the dress is back at Kensington Palace, part of
an exhibition of 14 outfits that
once belonged to the leading fashion icon of her
age, which opens to the public
tomorrow. They were among the 79 outfits selected by
the Princess herself, with the
help of Prince William, and sent to auction in New
York in 1996, where they raised
£2.22 million for charity.
Fourteen of the dresses were bought by Maureen
Rorech-Dunkel, an American
businesswoman and collector, who has lent them to
the royal dress collection at the
Princess's former home for a six-month display. They
will return to the palace on
indefinite loan in 2001.
Probably the most famous outfit is Victor
Edelstein's black silk velvet creation, with
its Edwardian overtones and hint of bustle, which
the Princess wore to dinner with the
Reagans at the White House in 1985, at which she
subsequently danced with John
Travolta. At £1.36 million, it made the highest
price in the auction.
All the outfits are stunning, even when displayed in
glass cases, but some have a less
happy provenance than others. There is a Catherine
Walker velvet-embroidered number
worn by the Princess during her last, ill-starred
official overseas visit with her husband
to South Korea in 1992, and another of silk taffeta,
rich with embroidery, worn during
a tour of India in the same year, when her marriage
was obviously failing.
Nevertheless, whatever the state of her private
life, the Princess never looked less than
breathtaking when on official duty.
"She developed a rapport with a small group of
British designers - Rhodes, Walker,
Edelstein and Oldfield - and together they worked
very hard at keeping that tension
between the stunningly eye-catching and the
suitability to the occasion," Joanna
Marschiner, the exhibition's project manager, said.
"You can see in this collection how
her dress sense developed. The earlier ones from the
1980s are comparatively cautious,
but by the 1990s, as her confidence in her public
work grew, she became much
bolder."
Nigel Arch, director of the Kensington Palace State
Apartments, said that when the
royal dress collection was redesigned and updated
last year, the most frequent request
from visitors was to see something belonging to the
Princess.
"This brings the story up to date. Younger members
of the Royal Family have always
introduced a note of glamour, ever since the young
Princess Alexandra of Denmark
married the future Edward VII in 1863 and dazzled
Victoria's stuffy court with her bold
fashions," Mr Arch said.
The Sun Princess may have departed, but in the
dresses at Kensington Palace, a
brilliant afterglow remains.
The exhibition opens tomorrow at Kensington Palace
State Apartments and closes
on March 31. Admission to the apartments costs
£8.50, with £1 extra for the
collection of the Princess's dresses, profits from
which will go to charity. There are
concessionary rates.