MeMoMu_PSW_066 REVENGE DRESS / FAN

Designer Christina Stambolian
Year 1994
Type Black off-the-shoulder evening gown
Material Silk
Designer Endel Lepp
Year 2024
Type Yellow off-the-shoulder club fan
Material Silk and ebony
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The "revenge dress" is an evening gown worn by Diana, Princess of Wales, to a 1994 dinner at the Serpentine Gallery in Kensington Gardens. The garment has been interpreted as having been worn by Diana "in revenge" for the televised admission of adultery by her husband Charles, then Prince of Wales.
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Aftermath
The day following the event, The Daily Telegraph wrote:
The Princess of Wales did not have to dine out before the television cameras at the Serpentine Gallery last night in order to avoid seeing her husband sharing his soul with the nation on the box. She could have watched a video, played bridge or simply washed her hair and curled up in bed [...] It's amazing what some people will do to avoid press speculation.[11]
Elle Pithers, writing for Vogue magazine, described the dress as the "progenitor of 'revenge dressing'".[3] In 2020, writing for The Daily Telegraph, Bethan Holt stated that the dress encompassed "the act of reclaiming the narrative", and was the "ultimate modern example of revenge dressing", in an article about women who have found inspiration in Diana Spencer's choice of the dress.[11] Holt wrote, "Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. But also: fashion hath no greater thrill than when being deployed for the purpose of expressing rage, froideur or an insouciant dose of 'look what you're missing'".[11]
The dress was analysed by Caroline McCauley in Fashion, Agency, and Empowerment: Performing Agency, Following Script,[8] and it was interpreted as part of Diana's couture of "revenge" following the breakdown of her marriage to Charles after years of having "snippets of a seductive glamour hidden by a proper royal purity".[8] Caroline McCauley wrote that instead of "cowering in shame" following Charles's admission, "Diana arrived in a figure-hugging black silk dress with a pearl choker necklace, black pumps, and scarlet lipstick and nail polish".[8] Georgina Howell, in her 1998 book Diana, Her Life in Fashion, wrote that the dress was "possibly the most strategic dress ever worn by a woman in modern times", further describing it as a "devastating wisp of black chiffon" with which Diana "flipped her husband clean off the front pages" following the broadcast of the programme.[8] "The Thrilla He Left to Woo Camilla" was the headline of The Sun the following day.[2]
In 2025 a wax statue of Diana wearing a replica of the dress was placed in Musée Grévin.[12]

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