Diana’s 1994 Stambolian dress goes on show in London before a December sale

The black silk crepe dress Princess Diana wore to the Serpentine Gallery on 29 June 1994 went on public display at Sotheby's in London on Friday. It is the first time the garment has been shown in nearly 30 years. The auction house will sell it in New York on 9 December during Luxury Week, with an estimate of $150,000 to $300,000.

Christina Stambolian, a Greek designer working in London, made the dress in 1991. Diana kept it unworn for three years. On the evening the BBC broadcast an interview in which the then Prince Charles admitted adultery, she dropped the safer gown planned for the Serpentine fundraiser and put this one on instead: off the shoulder, fitted through the bodice, with a pleated front and a side train. She added a pearl and sapphire choker, a Salvatore Ferragamo clutch and Manolo Blahnik heels.

Newspapers named it the revenge dress the next morning. The label has stuck because the timing was exact. Charles spoke on television. Diana walked into a gallery in a dress that photographed as a reply.

What the lot actually contains

Diana sold the dress in 1997, with 78 other garments, to raise money for cancer and AIDS charities. Sotheby's says a young Prince William suggested the sale. A rare numbered copy of that original catalogue, signed by Diana and by Stambolian, is included in the December lot. Part of the proceeds this time will go to NHS Lothian Charity for the Royal Edinburgh Hospital.

The dress has sat in a private collection since 1997. The consignor has not been named. Morgane Halimi, Sotheby's global head of handbags and fashion, described the 1994 choice as Diana taking control of her own story. That is auction-house language. The material facts are simpler: a known designer, a known night, a known later charity sale, and a garment that has not been on the block since the year Diana died.

Estimates at this level are a floor, not a forecast. In 2023 a ballerina-length evening dress Diana wore to a 1985 dinner sold for $1.15 million, eleven times its estimate and a record for one of her dresses. Sotheby's staff have already said they would not be surprised if the Stambolian piece clears $300,000.

The tour is the marketing

London holds the dress until 24 September. It then goes to Hong Kong and Geneva before the New York sale. The itinerary is the point. A garment that last changed hands in a charity room in 1997 is being walked through three collecting cities so that the December paddle is not a surprise to anyone who buys at this level.

The dress is fashion history because of one evening, and it is also a document of how Diana used clothes after the marriage had publicly broken. Charles and Diana divorced in 1996. She died in Paris in August 1997, at 36. The Stambolian dress outlived both the marriage and the woman who wore it. On Friday it was on a mannequin in New Bond Street, priced, lit and ready to travel.