Here’s How Princess Diana Got The Ultimate Revenge With One Iconic Outfit

It’s very rare — even today — to see a member of the royal family wearing a black garment. Amy Roberts, the costume designer for The Crown, spoke to Vanity Fair about the dress in October 2022. “Royalty aren’t really ever encouraged to wear black,” she said. “It’s considered funereal.” But that wasn’t the only reason the Revenge Dress turned heads. “The dress is very décolleté—bare shoulders. It was a sensation,” Roberts explained.

The sentiment behind wearing the dress also struck a chord with the public. Roberts said, “Every woman must feel [that way if they were in that position]: ‘Hey, you betrayed me. Up yours.’ And I think everybody went, ‘Yes, good for you.’ You can survive and look absolutely sensational.” So much so that when Roberts recreated the dress for actress Elizabeth Debicki in The Crown, it was equally eye-catching.

“Elizabeth got out of the car and there was a palpable ‘wowza’ moment on set, like when Emma Corrin was revealed in her wedding dress,” Roberts said. “Film sets are noisy and there’s lots of tinkering going on but nobody had to say, ‘Right, quiet, action.’ Everybody just went quiet on both occasions. It shows you how important those two dresses are.” So Roberts and her team had to work hard to get it right.

The problem they had was that Princess Diana “had a very gym-toned body,” according to Roberts. And because Debicki — who will play Diana between the years of 1991 and 1997 — is more than three inches taller than her real-life counterpart, that meant her body is very different. “So [the Revenge Dress] was made to fit Elizabeth,” Roberts explained. But the likeness is so close that it obviously still had the same impact.

“It fascinated me how entranced people were with that dress,” Debicki told Entertainment Weekly in October 2022. “When it became known that I had the part, I received these text messages saying congratulations, [but] there was also a huge amount of text messages about the Revenge Dress. ‘Do you get to wear the Revenge Dress?’ ‘Oh, my God, you get to wear the Revenge Dress!’”

And the lure of the dress also helped the actor get the most from her performance. “It provoked something in me as an actor,” she said. “I can't really explain it. It’s pretty incredible that a dress would represent a moment in history, or that this human’s life would represent so much and become so iconic. So that was a big day on set for me!” It was, after all, a big day in Diana's life.

On that very day on June 29, 1994, Prince Charles was making a dramatic television appearance. After all the chaos of the royal split — Charles and Diana separated in 1992 — this documentary, Charles: The Private Man, the Public Role, was going to celebrate his 25 years as the Prince of Wales. But — possibly to the horror of palace PR people — Charles also admitted in an interview that he had cheated on Diana with his long-term mistress Camilla Parker-Bowles.

Journalist Jonathan Dimbleby asked Charles during the interview, “Did you try to be faithful and honorable to your wife when you took on the vow of marriage?” Charles said that he had “until it became irretrievably broken down – us both having tried.” It was, he said, “deeply regrettable.” He also said that the breakdown of his marriage was “the last possible thing that [he] ever wanted.” But now everybody knew.

Royal experts have speculated on what the princess must have thought that day. People magazine’s senior editor Michelle Tauber — speaking in the publication’s Diana Diaries show in 2020 — offered her thoughts. She said, “On a human level for Diana, you can only imagine how upsetting that would have been, not only to hear that but to know that now the world has heard it.”

Tauber went on, “Effectively, Charles has aired some serious dirty laundry. Some may have decided this was altogether too much and tried to avoid the cameras, stay out of the limelight — just let the storm pass. That is not what Diana chose to do that night.” After all, Diana had to attend a Vanity Fair party at the Serpentine Gallery in London.

Diana arrived at the party wearing a spectacular, sexy, tastefully revealing black number by Greek designer Christina Stambolian. It was very daring — probably no royal would have worn it in the earlier half of the 20th century. And it ensured that every camera was on her. This was the dress that went down in history as Diana’s Revenge Dress.

The moniker only served to make it sound even more exciting and sexy. “Revenge is chic,” said The Sun the next day. “Di last night showed Charles what he’s missing.” Interestingly, though, it wasn’t just frustration at Charles that spurred Diana on to wear the dress — it was anger at a particular fashion house as well.

At first, the princess planned to wear a Valentino gown to the event. But then the company leaked details of the outfit to the press, and Diana was reportedly furious. Throughout her entire life, she maintained a difficult relationship with the media. So instead, Diana dug the Christina Stambolian dress — which she’d bought three years prior — out of her closet.

Stambolian told The Telegraph newspaper in 2013 that Diana thought the dress was “too daring” when she first bought it. And, of course, it didn’t remotely fit in with royal protocol! But the princess probably knew exactly what she was doing when she put it on and paired it with a pearl choker, featuring a black jewel at its center.

The choker had significance as well. The original jewel had been given to Diana by the Queen Mother on the day of her and Charles’ wedding. It was a brooch at first, but Diana had it mounted on pearls to become a choker. Was her wearing it on that day a sign that she was now using the royal family — not the other way around?

And then there were the shoes. Diana didn’t usually wear high heels, but she did that day. She put on some black Manolo Blahnik pumps with heels — shoes perfectly designed to showcase her legs. Perhaps that was another statement. One of the reasons Diana tended not to wear heels was because they made Charles look shorter than her.

People magazine’s senior style editor Brittany Talarico remarked in Diana Diaries, “Of course, Diana knew that all eyes were going to be on her. She didn’t have to say anything with words. It was a fashion response — that dress became her clear message to Charles and the world.” And what a statement! The newspapers had a field day with the princess’ Revenge Dress.

British tabloid newspaper The Sun made the image of Diana its front page the next morning. The story inside had a heading clearly directed at Charles: “The thrilla he left to woo Camilla.” Diana had, there was no doubt, won the PR battle. As fashion journalist Alex Longmore told HuffPost 2018, “It was the first time people had been introduced to the new Diana, the one who didn’t need the royal family.”

Diana knew perfectly well what a massive impact the revenge dress had, too, and she decided to channel it into some good. In June 1997 — two months before her untimely death — she auctioned it off for charity alongside some other pieces. The famous dress sold for a very impressive $65,000, and the money went to the AIDS Crisis Trust and the Royal Marsden Hospital Cancer Fund.

As for the pearl choker, no one’s entirely sure where it ended up after Diana passed away. The vast majority of her jewelry was passed down to her sons William and Harry, so they might still have it. Some have speculated that a few jewels from the choker were used for the engagement ring Harry gave to Meghan Markle.

But perhaps the choker wasn’t the most important accessory — instead, it was her gleeful expression and body language. Longmore said in the HuffPost piece, “It’s her smile, her confidence, and her shoulders that make these photos so memorable. She’s radiant, happy, and in control…” But, of course, Diana was no strange to making a strong impression through fashion.

It’s important to remember that the royals reportedly follow a strict dress code — one built according to decades of protocol and tradition. If you’re a princess, then, you can’t just wake up in the morning and throw on a casual outfit. Instead, you’ve got to be mindful of presenting a certain image to the public. But Diana didn’t always play by those rules.

The rules on royal outfits might honestly put some modern women off marrying into royalty. And there are a lot of them! Before Queen Elizabeth II passed away, for example, she reportedly disliked anybody wearing brightly colored nail polish or wedge shoes. And even know, royal ladies should ideally wear dresses or skirts — not pants.

Yet Diana seemed to immediately begin breaking these rules. She became the first princess to frequently wear pants, just as most women of that era did. Diana was also seen wearing bright red nail polish while the Queen herself never wore a shade other than nude. And she often refused to wear the traditional hat and gloves of royalty as well.

Eleri Lynn — the curator of the 2017 Diana: Her Fashion Story exhibition — told People that year, “She abandoned the royal protocol of wearing gloves because she liked to hold hands when visiting people or shake hands and have direct contact. [Diana] also stopped wearing hats because she said, ‘You can’t cuddle a child in a hat.’”

Eleri explained that Diana wanted to be as approachable as possible — especially when kids were concerned. The curator went on, “When she was visiting hospitals, for example, she would wear cheerful clothes that would convey warmth and often chunky jewelry so that children could come and play with them.” The colors see chose were often progressive, too.

Another interesting rule from Diana’s time was that royals weren’t really supposed to wear black outside of funerals. But the princess actually broke that one long before she brought out the famous little black dress. Just after getting engaged to Prince Charles, you see, she wore a strapless black number for her first public appearance as his fiancée.

Diana had help choosing her outfits from stylist Anna Harvey, who wrote an article about her experiences dressing the princess for The Telegraph in 2017. She remembered, notably, “Neither of us really knew that much about royal etiquette and what was expected of her style-wise” at the beginning of Diana’s marriage. So they took a different approach to fashion.

According to Harvey, Diana would approach her and say something like, “We’re going to Balmoral, and we have to dress for tea.” And then the women would “have to guess about the style of dress she should wear and find lots of options.” Harvey also noted, “She very quickly jettisoned gloves. The royal family all wore them, but Diana just preferred not to.”

Harvey had written previously about Diana after the princess’ shocking death. Back in 1997, the stylist remembered in Vogue magazine how very inexperienced the young Diana had been when it came to fashion. But that may have actually been a boon. “Diana had been called a fashion icon, but at the start, she was incredibly unsophisticated about it all,” Harvey wrote.

“Her taste was typical of her background; upper-class English girls weren’t as knowing about clothes as they are now — there were no It-girls then. But she was very open to ideas,” Harvey continued. And furthermore, Diana “loved to experiment.” This ability to steer clear of the royal protocol allowed Diana to make bold fashion statements throughout her time as a royal.

And as she grew into her role, Harvey explained, Diana “rapidly learned how to make an impact.” For a start, “She knew that the midnight-blue velvet dress by Victor Edelstein — which she wore when she danced with John Travolta at the White House — was one heck of a number, and it thrilled her.”

Diana learned about the impact her fashion had on Prince Charles as well. Harvey said, “Once she asked me whether I minded if she called her husband into the drawing room to ask him what he thought of a black Murray Arbeid — with a huge oyster-grey waterfall skirt — and he just stared at her in it and said, ‘You look absolutely wonderful.’”

There would be a different kind of staring done when Diana wore her little black dress in 1994, but it wouldn’t have worked if the media hadn’t already considered her a style superstar. And it should also come as no surprise that — as Harvey wrote in her 1997 piece — Diana often “used clothes to make gestures.”

Some people think a particular sweater of Diana’s — worn before she even married Charles — might have been her sending a message. While still a royal fiancée, she was often photographed wearing a top that depicted several white sheep and one black one. Was Diana indicating that she considered herself the black sheep of the family?

Harvey wrote in her memorial piece for Vogue that “the turning point style-wise in [Diana’s] marriage came on the second tour to Australia when she began playing with glamor and becoming much more daring.” This tour was in 1988. And Diana wore bright, colorful evening gowns as her marriage sadly continued to crumble.

But there was also another turning point for the princess, Harvey later wrote. She mentioned in her piece in The Telegraph that Diana may have realized the true power of fashion when she wore a white one-shoulder Hachi dress to the premiere of Octopussy in June 1983. It looked stunning on her — and very sexy. But there was another reason it worked so well.

Harvey wrote about that one particular dress: “It was quite ahead of the game, fashion-wise, and considered a bit ‘much’ for the Princess of Wales — she looked too good. Still, I think that was when she realized that, if she was clever, she could make a huge statement with what she wore and where she wore it.”

And, of course, the best was still to come. As the rift between Diana and Charles deepened, Diana began wearing clothes that were more modern and less, well, princess-y than what had come before. The royal dressing rules were no longer being adhered to and the gloves were quite literally off.