Princess Diana’s ‘Revenge Dress’ Is Heading to Auction for the First Time in Nearly 30 Years

The fashion icon wore the strapless silk frock the same day her then-estranged husband publicly admitted to having an affair

Sarah Kuta | Daily Correspondent

September 14, 2026 11:58 a.m.

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On June 29, 1994—the same day her then-estranged husband publicly acknowledged his infidelity—Diana, Princess of Wales, stepped out wearing a chic, black frock and made a fashion statement that reverberated around the world. 

Now, the iconic strapless silk gown that became known as the “revenge dress” is heading to auction for the first time in nearly 30 years. Sotheby’s will offer the dress on December 9, during its Luxury Week sale series in New York. 

Diana married Charles, Prince of Wales—now Charles III, King of England—on July 29, 1981. They had two sons together: William in 1982 and Harry in 1984. But by the mid-1980s, their marriage had deteriorated, and both Charles and Diana had extramarital affairs. They separated in December 1992. 

A couple of years later, a two-and-a-half-hour documentary aired on national television, in which Charles admitted to infidelity. During filming, the British journalist Jonathan Dimbleby asked then-45-year-old Charlies if he had tried to be “faithful and honorable” to Diana when they got married. 

“Yes, absolutely,” Charles said. 

“And you were?” asked Dimbleby. 

“Yes,” Charles said, adding after a short pause, “until it became irretrievably broken down, us both having tried.”

The admission—which had been leaked several days earlier—sent shock waves through the royal family and deepened the couple’s marital crisis. A few hours after the documentary aired, Diana attended a party at the Serpentine Gallery, in London. She had reportedly planned to wear a different gown but opted instead for the little black dress. 

Featuring an asymmetrical hemline, a pleated bodice, a side train and an off-the-shoulder neckline, the dress had been created by the Greek fashion designer Christina Stambolian for Diana three years earlier. But it hung in her closet until that fateful evening, when she selected it with help from her butler Paul Burrell. Diana opted to pair the form-fitting dress with Manolo Blahnik heels, a pearl-and-sapphire choker necklace and a Salvatore Ferragamo clutch bag. 

“She could not have got her message across more clearly had she shouted it to the sky: ‘I am not a victim anymore!’” Georgina Howell wrote in Diana, Her Life in Fashion. “The performance worked brilliantly. The public adored it: Diana was back.”

The dress allowed Diana to communicate without saying a word, underscoring just how instinctively she understood fashion’s influence. She “turned the dress into one of the most powerful messages she ever made,” and she did so “on her own terms,” Morgane Halimi, Sotheby’s global head of handbags and fashion, says in a statement. 

Her decision to wear the dress “gave license to anyone, but especially women, to use fashion beyond adornment and much more intentionally and meaningfully: as a shield, a weapon or both,” Halimi adds. “She walked into a moment in which so much of her story was being told for her and, through what she chose to wear, reclaimed the narrative for herself.” 

According to Vogue, Buckingham Palace protocol dictated that members of the royal family avoid wearing all black unless they were in mourning. But the color would “pointedly become a hallmark of Diana’s wardrobe post-separation,” per the publication. 

Diana died in 1997 in a car crash in Paris at age 36. Just months before her untimely death, she had auctioned off dozens of her dresses in New York, ultimately raising more than $3 million for cancer and AIDS charities. 

Briege and Graeme Mackenzie purchased the revenge dress for about $64,000 and have held on to it since. The couple used the frock to raise money for charities in Scotland, reports the Washington Post’s Amy B. Wang. 

“My late husband and I knew that this dress was something special,” Briege Mackenzie says in the statement. “Bidding at auction and winning it was one of the great days of our life together. With him gone, that chapter has closed, and so should this one. I hope it goes to someone who will enjoy owning it as much as we did.” 

The gown is expected to sell for $150,000 to $300,000, but the price could go even higher. In 2023, a black-and-blue evening dress Diana wore to a 1985 dinner sold for a record $1.15 million, 11 times the pre-auction estimate. 

Before its live auction, the revenge dress will be exhibited in London, Hong Kong, Geneva and New York. A portion of the proceeds from the sale will be donated to the NHS Lothian Charity on behalf of the Royal Edinburgh Hospital.

Sarah Kuta is a writer and editor based in Longmont, Colorado. She covers history, science, travel, food and beverage, sustainability, economics and other topics.