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Princess Diana’s famous ‘revenge dress’ is heading back to auction. Sotheby’s will sell the black gown by Christina Stambolian in New York this year on December 9. According to People, it is expected to earn $150,000 to $300,000.

Before the sale, the auction house will exhibit the dress in London, Hong Kong, and Geneva. Parts of the proceeds will go to NHS Lothian Charity for the Royal Edinburgh Hospital. After the news, X users started reacting. “Kim Kardashian STAY AWAY,” one said. Another added, “PLEASE hide this dress from Kim Kardashian, I’m begging.” 

The Kardashian mention didn’t come out of nowhere. The American socialite wore Marilyn Monroe’s famous ‘Happy Birthday, Mr. President’ dress to the 2022 Met Gala. Her decision drew heavy criticism at that time. But Diana’s dress has its own story. She wore it on June 29, 1994, at a Vanity Fair fundraising dinner for the Serpentine Gallery in Kensington Gardens.

That same night, ITV aired Charles: The Private Man, the Public Role, presented by journalist Jonathan Dimbleby. During the program, Dimbleby asked Prince Charles if he had been “faithful and honorable” to Diana. Charles replied, “Yes, absolutely.” Dimbleby then asked if he had been faithful throughout their marriage. 

Charles answered, “Yes […] Until it became irretrievably broken down, us both having tried.” Diana and Charles had already separated in 1992. Her biographer Sarah Bradford later wrote that Diana “feigned indifference” to the program. Diana had owned the Stambolian dress for three years. 

She once thought it was “too daring.” She had planned to wear a Valentino dress that night before changing her mind. Her former stylist Anna Harvey later said in the 2013 Channel 4 documentary Princess Diana’s Dresses: The Auction that Diana “wanted to look a million dollars […] and she did.” Stambolian also explained Diana’s choice of black.

She compared her to Odile, the black swan in Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake. Diana, she said, “chose not to play the scene like Odette, innocent in white. She played it like Odile. She was clearly angry.” It was an off-shoulder, figure-hugging black silk gown. Diana paired it with a pearl choker, black pumps, scarlet lipstick, and matching nail polish.

The dress also got several names. Fashion writer Georgina Howell later referred to it as the “I’ll Show You dress,” the “Serpentine Cocktail,” and the “Vengeance dress.” Meanwhile, Tina Brown gave it another nickname in her 2007 book The Diana Chronicles. Fashion editors, she wrote, knew it as “her f–ck-you dress.”

Elle Pithers called it the “progenitor of ‘revenge dressing.’” Diana later sold the dress for charity. In June 1997, she auctioned 79 dresses to raise money for breast cancer and AIDS charities. According to The Independent, the Stambolian gown sold for £39,098, or about $65,000 at the time, to Scottish couple Graeme and Briege Mackenzie. 

The dress again returned to public display in 2017. The Museum of Style Icons in Newbridge, County Kildare, featured it in Diana: A Fashion Legacy. Organizers called it “the most important exhibit.” In 2025, Musée Grévin also displayed a wax statue of Diana wearing a replica of the dress. 

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