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 then-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. That dress, a Christina Strambolian design, sold for $74,000 in a charity auction in 1997. But the most expensive of her dresses sold was actually a gown she wore on her 1985 trip to Florence.

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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). The pre-auction estimate for the dress was $100,000 to $200,000. That means it sold for about 10 to 11 times its value! One of the reasons it sold for such a high price may have to do with the fact that it was the first dress she requested directly from the designer, who also went on to create several of her post-divorce dresses.

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 "Travolta" dress," which she wore when she danced with the actor at the White House in 1985. That dress trailed slightly behind the starry Jacques Azagury gown, selling for $910,000 in 2024. 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 (via Julien's Auctions). This makes the dress her third most expensive dress, coming in two places behind the Azagury gown.