A Dress for Diana

Categories: In the News , Romance

Last year I went to see the exhibit Diana: A Celebration at the Dayton Art Institute.  I got a rare look at Princess Diana’s childhood photographs, mementos, and home movies, as well as a collection of her dresses worn at both royal and charity functions. 

The highlight of the exhibit was the dress worn at her wedding to Prince Charles at St. Paul’s Cathedral on July 29, 1981.  Featuring a 25-foot train trimmed with lace and an 11-foot veil hand embroidered with 10,000 mother-of-pearl sequins, the dress was stunning to behold. 

If you weren’t able to see the dress in person, then reading the book      A Dress for Diana by David and Elizabeth Emanuel is the next best thing.  The Emanuels became instantly famous when they were hand picked by Diana to design the most famous dress in the world. 

A Dress for Diana gives an inside look at the creation of the top-secret dress, from the original sketches to the finished product.  Filled with detailed photographs and memorabilia from the designers’ personal scrapbooks, the Emanuels document their own unique role in this historic fairy tale wedding.

Other books such as Diana: Her Life In Fashion by Georgina Howell and Dressing Diana by Tim Graham show how this shy young woman transformed into an international icon of style, until her untimely death on August 31, 1997.