The black silk evening dress Princess Diana wore on the night that reshaped royal fashion is heading back to auction, with Sotheby’s expecting the garment to draw close to $300,000.
Before the sale the garment travels on a public tour, giving a new generation a measure of the bodice’s cut and the way the silk holds light.
An object that began as a private wardrobe choice has become a durable emblem, proof that a silhouette can carry more than cloth.
The dress turns on a kind of radiant defiance, the bare neckline and slashed bias reading less as provocation than as quiet self-assertion.
