On the evening of June 29, 1994, amid a scorching heat wave, around 100 camera people crowded onto the sidewalk outside of London’s Serpentine Gallery, where a gala hosted by Vanity Fair’s then editor in chief Graydon Carter was just getting started. And suddenly, there she was—Princess Diana, the woman of the hour, exiting her chauffeured Rolls Royce and kissing her host’s cheeks.
“As she got out of the car, it was impossible not to gasp,” gallerist Dame Julia Peyton-Jones recalled. “Diana was one of the most famous and beautiful women in the world… it was as if she’d come down to earth from another planet. She looked sensational in her off-the-shoulder, low-cut garment, and we all felt drab and old-fashioned in comparison.”
Created by Greek designer Christina Stambolian, Diana’s little black dress with a sweetheart neckline and a sexy above-the-knee asymmetrical hem was an instant fashion sensation, a sartorial coming-out party, after years of being beholden to the royal’s strict rules regarding wardrobe and protocol. Even the head-to-toe black was a no-no for royal family members, only to be worn during mourning periods.
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“Her head was held high, and she had a grin on her face,” Eloise Moran writes in The Lady Di Look Book. “No more shoulder pads, just her naked shoulders, strong and stoic. Around her neck was a pearl and sapphire choker that she had worn at many official royal engagements during the eighties—inarguably a nod to her ill-fated marriage and past life, worn like a badge of honour, contrasted against a powerfully risqué ensemble which signaled a sense of an awakening and a new dawn.”
As she arrived in what was immediately dubbed the “revenge dress,” ITV was airing a long-awaited sit-down interview with her estranged husband, Prince Charles, where he admitted shamefully that he had indeed been faithful…until his marriage had “irretrievably broken down, us having both tried.”
Suddenly, news of the Prince of Wales’s mea culpa was overshadowed by his scene-stealing, soon-to-be ex-wife. “It was the ultimate power move and the first step in the confident final chapter of her story,” Moran writes. “That evening marked the turning point in Diana’s personal narrative.”
Throughout the summer of 1994, Diana continued to proclaim her independence, blossoming into the new woman she wanted to be.
The year had begun as one of uncertainty and change for the Princess of Wales. In December of 1993, she had officially retired from royal public duties, telling the press she hoped to have “a meaningful public role with, hopefully, a more private life.”
With no more royal calendar to adhere to, Diana was free for the first time since stepping onto the world stage in 1981. “Having dismissed her bodyguards, she can pursue the life of a private, albeit privileged, citizen,” Michael Posner wrote that year in Chatelaine. “She often drives her own sporty green Audi 2.3SE around West London, lunching at the tony San Lorenzo or Launceston Place, playing tennis at the exclusive Vanderbilt Racquet Club and taking weekly massage and therapy sessions at a Chinese clinic.”
