The Eerie Meaning Behind Princess Diana’s Funeral Dress Revealed Decades After Her Death
Princess Diana and Gianni Versace’s friendship marked a significant shift from her royal days to cementing herself as a fashion icon. However, both celebrities’ lives were marked by tragedy.
Diana and Gianni Versace met in 1985 at Milan’s Teatro alla Scala, but didn’t form a bond until she was free from her divorce from Charles. “Over the next several years, Gianni gradually became one of her favorite designers, although she often made him remove the gaudy medusas and overwrought details he piled on his clothes,” Deborah Ball wrote in her book House of Versace. “He gave her first pick of his couture collection and designed pieces exclusively for her that were classic but had a pinch of glamour.”
In this time, Diana became more affiliated with more bold looks that were different from what the Firm had expected. She became closer to the designer when he dressed her for the 1997 Vanity Fair cover. “I had a fitting with her last week for new suits and clothing for spring, and she is so serene,” the fashion designer said. “It is a moment in her life, I think, when she’s found herself – the way she wants to live.”
The pair would often get dinner with another close friend, Elton John. The “Benny and the Jets” singer reportedly had a closet said to contain every Versace shirt made. “Gianni Versace is an aesthete,” the Princess wrote in the forward of Rock & Royalty. “In search of the essence of beauty, which he captures with grace and ease.”
In 1996, Gianni Versace was killed by serial killer Andrew Cunanan at his residence in Miami. A week later, Diana wore a sleek black Versace look for the funeral. More specifically, the autumn/winter 1997 shift dress was paired with pearls and the Dior Diana bag. Sabai Lubnow, curator of The Gianni Versace Retrospective at The Arches in London Bridge, said, “That bag was never called the Diana bag by Gianni. The same with the so-called Bondage collection; Gianni called it Miss S&M. But these names come from collectors, fans, people who wear and love the pieces. That’s where the connection sticks.”
“Do you think they’ll do that to me?” she said, according to her former bodyguard Lee Sansum the following morning after Versace’s death. Six weeks after the funeral, Diana died in a car crash following a paparazzi chase in Paris alongside her lover Dodi Fayed and their driver Henri Paul. Her appearance at the funeral had only been a portent of her tragic death.
Diana and Elton John had a brief falling out, but later was brought together by their friend’s death. “Gianni Versace was murdered, and then Diana rang me up and we reconciled,” John recalled on Lorraine in 2018. “And six weeks later, I’m in the same house, and she’s dead. It was an extraordinary and mesmerising summer, and I just couldn’t believe what was going on.”
