Royal Author Explains How Princess Diana Taunted and Tried to Make Camilla Parker Bowles Go ‘Insane’ With a Blue Dress
We’ve all heard about Princess Diana‘s revenge dress and the message she was trying to send to her soon-to-ex-husband and his then-mistress when she wore it in 1994. But according to a royal author who was friends with the late princess, there was another dress Diana was seen in years earlier that she wore to make Charles’ lover (formerly known as Camilla Parker Bowles) go “insane.”
How Princess Diana taunted Camilla with a simple blue dress
Former diarist and magazine editor Tina Brown was friends with the late royal and even met with Diana a few weeks before her death in 1997. Brown, who wrote The Diana Chronicles and also authored the book The Palace Papers: Inside the House of Windsor — The Truth and the Turmoil, revealed the princess’s intention with a simple blue polyester dress.
According to Brown, the dress was made by a woman who competed with Camilla for then-Prince Charles’ heart. That was Australian clothing designer Dale “Kanga” Tryon. She met Charles when were teenagers and attended Geelong Grammar School together.
“After moving to London and marrying Lord Tryon, she became a trusted confidante of Charles’,” Brown wrote (per Page Six). “Dale’s directness [and] warmth were just the sort of qualities that Charles admired in Camilla.”
When Tryon started to make her name in fashion with her “Kanga” line of dresses Diana decided to wear one of them for the 1985 Live Aid concert, and the dress was seen by a TV audience of millions. The princess sported the same number to a polo match in Florida as well as during a photo shoot with Charles and their children at their home in Kensington Palace.
“Princess Diana wore one of her deeply off-brand, multi-patterned dresses … just to make Camilla insane,” Brown noted.
The author also reported in her book that Camilla’s attitude toward Tryon turned colder following Diana’s stunt.
“All this stuff about Lady Tryon being such a friend of Lady Diana … She’s never even met Diana Spencer,” Camilla told Brown in an interview.
Camilla wore a gown by Princess Diana’s favorite designer to a huge royal event
Decades later, on the most important day of her life, Camilla wore a dress not by Tyron but by Princess Diana’s favorite designer when she tapped Bruce Oldfield to create her coronation gown.
Oldfield and Diana were close in the 1980s when he described the princess as the “perfect client.”
Oldfield was Diana’s go-to designer for several years until her relationship with Charles ended in the ’90s. Harper’s Bazaar noted at that point Oldfield believed Diana “wanted a new look to fit her new life. The clothes became Gianni Versace and John Galliano: shorter, hipper, and tighter, as she was freed from the constraints of the ever-present royal courtier eye.”
Camilla then began using Oldfield to create her attire and he has done so ever since. In addition to her coronation gown, he designed Queen Camilla’s pale turquoise lace dress for the Sri Lanka tour in 2013 as well as the gown she wore to the State Opening of Parliament in 2015 and the sparkling blue gown she donned to the James Bond No Time To Die movie premiere in 2021.
