Credit: News Group Newspapers Ltd
This is the first picture of Diana Spencer that ever appeared in a newspaper. It wasn't published until a few weeks later but it was taken 40 years ago today, by royal photographer Arthur Edwards. In a 2017 article in the Irish Sun newspaper, he tells the story:
Those first, early meetings with Diana — then a shy teenager — remain burned into my memory nearly 40 years on.
My job on The Sun had been to be the first to identify and photograph the woman who would steal Prince Charles’s heart.
I did find her and photograph her before my rivals.
But I shoved the picture in a drawer because I couldn’t believe the Prince, who was nearly 32, would be going out with a teenager.
My remarkable friendship with Diana began exactly a year to the day before her wedding to the world’s most eligible bachelor.
Tracking down Charles’s new love had become a bit of an obsession with me as I followed him everywhere.
Along the way I saw his other girlfriends, like Davina Sheffield and Sabrina Guinness, but they didn’t last long.
He had only recently broken up with Marjorie [sic] Wallace, a stunning girl with model looks who we all thought would be The One.
Note: Charles's girlfriend before Diana was Anna Wallace.
Then on July 29, 1980, the trail took me to a polo match at Cowdray Park at Midhurst, West Sussex.
I’d been told Charles had arrived with a girl called Lady Diana Spencer but no one seemed to know what she looked like.
Looking around I saw a pretty girl sitting among the crowds wearing a necklace with the letter D on it.
I gave it a go and politely asked: “Excuse me, are you Lady Diana Spencer?”
When she said yes I asked to take a photograph. So she posed for me, her hand delicately framing her face.
It was the first of hundreds of thousands of pictures I would take over the coming years.
But I filed this one in a drawer after discovering that Earl Spencer’s youngest daughter, who worked as a nursery teacher, had only just celebrated her 19th birthday.
I had the scoop of the year but I sent the roll of film back to the office by messenger with a note, “File this, because I’m not sure”.
A month after I’d first photographed her I was driving along the banks of the River Dee near Balmoral, certain she was The One.
Then I saw Prince Charles fishing with an unusual-looking ghillie.
It was Diana dressed as a man. I stopped the car and tore across the field, while Diana ran away, hid behind a tree and used a mirror to look over her shoulder to see where I was.
She suddenly made a dash for it through the trees and I got all these pictures.
Charles stomped out of the river fuming because his fishing had been interrupted.
We then ran my photo of Diana from the polo on Page 1 with a headline: Lady Diana Spencer — All the Qualities to be Queen. (Read the entire article here.)
And one more thing: Diana's famous blue gown, the one she wore while dancing with John Travolta at the White House in 1985, will be going on display at Kensington Palace:
This week we welcome Diana, Princess of Wales’s ‘Travolta’ dress home to #KensingtonPalace 👗— Historic Royal Palaces (@HRP_palaces) July 29, 2020
We can't wait to reopen the palace tomorrow, with this iconic gown on display for the first time since it joined our Royal Ceremonial Dress Collection in 2019.https://t.co/DZPfyghno0 pic.twitter.com/jVzN2EshOY
The dress was featured in the 1997 Christie's auction and sold for $222,500, the highest sale price of all 80 dresses. The buyer was anonymous and the dress has been sold a couple of times over the years. The independent charity Historic Royal Palaces purchased it in December:
The princess wore the dress, made by couturier Victor Edelstein, at an event at the White House in November 1985.
Photographs of the princess and the Hollywood star gliding around the room to the music of "Saturday Night Fever" were seen around the world, and Travolta later described the experience as having been "like a fairy tale."
Historic Royal Palaces (HRP), an independent charity that looks after palaces in the UK, paid a princely sum for the dress on Tuesday -- the day after the dress failed to sell at auction.
"We're delighted to have acquired this iconic evening gown for the Royal Ceremonial Dress Collection -- a designated collection of national and international importance -- over twenty years since it first left Kensington Palace," said Eleri Lynn, curator at HRP, in a statement.
"Not only is the 'Travolta' dress a fantastic example of couture tailoring designed to dazzle on a state occasion, it represents a key moment in the story of twentieth century royal fashion."
The dress had been expected to fetch up to £350,000 (about $388,000) at Kerry Taylor Auctions on Monday.
HRP purchased the gown outside of the auction, according to a spokesman.
A spokeswoman for Kerry Taylor Auctions told CNN that they wouldn't comment on why the dress didn't sell at auction, but the seller is happy that the dress will remain in the UK.
The auction house last sold at the same auction house for £240,000 ($311,000) in March 2013, to a British buyer who bought the dress as a gift for his wife.
Diana wore the dress with a sapphire and pearl choker, an outfit that has since become emblematic of the princess. Lynn said Diana had become a fashion icon like Jackie Kennedy or Audrey Hepburn, calling the princess "timeless, elegant and still so relevant." (From CNN.com; read the entire story here.)
Pete Souza, who was the official White House photographer for President Obama, also served in that role during the Reagan administration. He took the famous picture; here's another shot from the same night:
If the Travolta dress got the highest price at Christie's, which dress got the lowest? It was a pink silk dinner dress by Catherine Walker, worn by Diana in 1993:
Sale price? $21,850.
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