No, Not The Revenge Dress: This Is The Princess Diana Look That Fetched The Highest Auction Price
Princess Diana was undoubtedly a fashion icon. There were royal fashion rules she never followed. For example, she did not wear high necklines. There were even looks she wore that had deeper meaning than you knew. One example is her iconic revenge dress, the little black dress, which she wore after Prince Charles went public about his infidelity. Not surprisingly, her outfits carry high prices at auctions. But her most expensive look wasn't the iconic revenge dress. It was actually a gown she wore on her 1985 trip to Florence.
Princess Diana Archive/Getty
The gown, designed by Jacques Azagury, featured an oversized bow and a celestial pattern on the upper half. The skirt of the dress is a beautiful royal purple. Princess Diana re-wore the dress during a 1986 royal tour of British Columbia. The dress set a record in 2023 for the most expensive dress worn by the princess to be sold at auction, when it sold for $1.14 million (via Julien's Auctions).
Princess Diana's other dresses have also fetched high prices
Many of Princess Diana's other dresses have also raised hundreds of thousands of dollars at auctions. The idea to put her clothing up for sale was suggested by her son, Prince William, and the first auction was held in June 1997. That auction sold over 70 dresses and raised over $3 million for cancer and AIDS research. Interestingly, her coats are never seen at auctions because Princess Diana often gave her coats away to the homeless when she was alive, Martin Nolan (co-founder of Julien's Auctions) revealed to People.
Some of Princess Diana's dresses that have fetched high price tags include her Murray Arbeid dress, with diamante details, which she wore with pink gloves to the premiere of "Phantom of the Opera" in 1986. The dress sold for a whopping $780,000. The Victor Edelstein ball gown she wore for her official portrait in 1991 sold for $604,800.