It is a week since the engagement of HRH the Prince of Wales to Lady Diana Spencer was announced, and the future Princess’s first public engagement is to be a musical recital at Goldsmiths’ Hall.
The 19-year-old Diana has chosen a black dress from the Emmanuels. When her car arrives at Goldsmiths’ Hall, she steps out to a mass of flashing cameras.
An excitable writer describes it as ‘the greatest moment of sexual theatre since Cinderella swapped her scuffed scullery clogs for Prince Charming’s glass slippers’.
Diana, already nervous, is taken aback. ‘I was quite big-chested then and they all got frightfully excited,’ she says later.
As the evening progresses, Diana grows even more unsure of herself. ‘It was an horrendous occasion. I didn’t know whether to go out of the door first. I didn’t know whether your handbag should be in your left hand or your right hand.’
A reception at Buckingham Palace follows. The 52-year-old Princess Grace, the object of this sort of attention back in the Fifties, notices Diana’s discomfort, and suggests they retire to the ladies’ room for a little chat.
Diana tells Princess Grace that she is worried her dress is unbecoming. It is, she explains, two sizes too small.
Her experience tonight has suddenly made her realise how unbearable it will be to have hundreds of people always looking at her. She sees stretching ahead of her a life without any form of privacy. What should she do? She bursts into tears.
Princess Grace puts her arms around her and pats her on the shoulder. She cups her cheeks in her hands and jokes, gently: ‘Don’t worry, dear. You’ll see — it’ll only get worse.’
The two women return to the throng, there to mingle and be assessed.
Eighteen months later, Princess Grace is killed after her car fails to take a sharp corner on the serpentine D37 outside Monaco. Though the Prince of Wales sees no reason why Diana should attend the funeral, she is adamant that she should go.
By now, she has grown used to the hullabaloo surrounding her every appearance, and in some way appears to feed off it. Now in another black dress, far more demure, she is the centre of attention at the funeral. She doesn’t put a foot wrong.
At the reception afterwards, she speaks to Princess Caroline of Monaco about her mother. ‘We were psychically connected,’ she tells her. In June 2010 the dress is bought at a London auction for £192,000 by a fashion museum in Chile
