We need to discuss Diana. Or we might ‘forget her soon enough’. So gasped the past week’s front pages as the Earl of Spencer sparred with King Charles in the latest War of the Wilting Roses.
While news alerts played ping-pong between what the princess’s brother and ex-husband had or had not said, a second Diana story was racking up views on TikTok. Trending under the ‘Princess of Wales’ were clips of her little black ‘revenge dress’, on display at Sotheby’s in London before it goes under the hammer in New York. ‘Diana was such a baddy!’ posted one user with a clip of the 1994 cocktail dress. ‘This ICONIC dress belongs in a museum!’ commented another. ‘Don’t sell it to Kim Kardashian!’ waded in several more.
Are we honouring the People’s Princess? Or is it the People’s Pin-Up?
One can only guess from their social media handles, but Paul Burrells these were not. These were Diana’s newest subjects, born long after she wore the dress the night Charles admitted adultery; born long after she died.
Twenty-nine years after her death, here lie Diana’s two legacies. On the one hand as media goldmine (the latest ‘revelations’ from Earl Spencer’s book, published nine months after his divorce, are in the coincidental public interest I’m sure). On the other, as social media gold: not the People’s Princess but Pinterest’s – worshipped for her style, feminism and beauty – without needing to flog any jam.
The ‘cult’ of Diana has long had its followers. Even the New York Times – not exactly the most monarchist publication – gushed over Charles’s ‘shy and charming’ bride back in 1981. After their split 11 years later, though, the blushing queen-to-be grew up. No more sheep jumpers, puffy wedding skirts or Sloane Ranger shoulder pads; just sleek, shoulderless evening gowns and swimwear for a St Tropez yacht. The nation’s most glamorous royal had become its most glamorous royal rebel. Every layman, they liked to believe, could see themselves in her transformation: scorned wives, bulimia sufferers, the patients with cancer, AIDS and amputated limbs whom Diana’s charity work had championed.
By the time of her fatal car crash, she was an obsession unto herself. The nation’s grief, when it rained, poured through London via 60 million flowers, ‘Diana of Love’ tributes and handmade New Age shrines comparing her to the Virgin Mary. Princess Diana was now Saint Diana: a title bizarrely exemplified in 1998 when David Hasselhoff prayed to her to hold off the rain during a concert at her Althorp home. The forecast downpour never came. The princess – the Baywatch actor announced – had answered his outlandish prayer.
But even that was nothing compared with the frenzy of recent years. Diana as Diana the Icon has been given the Crown treatment, the Oscar treatment (Kristen Stewart’s surreal performance in Spencer saw her nominated for best actress), and been resurrected as ‘Our Di’ by drag queens on the BBC. She’s been dredged up by Harry’s memoir, Meghan’s interviews, by Panorama exposés and page after Instagram page, which coo over her Nineties fashion and the ‘yas queen’ feminism she supposedly represents. More recently, when not trying to destroy us, AI has joined the internet fray. ‘I STOPPED DIANA BEFORE HER WEDDING AND SHOWED HER THE FUTURE,’ screamed one video that popped up on TikTok last week, with the perfection of deepfake doom. This is Diana à la algorithm: pop culture’s clickbait princess. Her memory unearthed again and again while the monarchy – the institution she once held up – struggles to stay upright.
This summer, an Ipsos poll found that only a third of 18- to 34-year-olds support keeping the Royal Family, compared with three-quarters of over-55s. Even the staunchest monarchist – not to mention the disgraced formerly-known-Prince Andrew – can hardly fail to guess why. Yet, with those numbers, Diana’s resurgent reign is somewhat paradoxical. Are we honouring the People’s Princess? Or is it the People’s Pin-Up? Excavated and fawned over every time the culture wars call?
Over the weekend, I went to visit Diana’s greying revenge dress at Sotheby’s in Mayfair. Snap, snap, snap, echoed the phone cameras as tourists and young women filed in and out to see it. Perhaps they’d stop and linger by the description of this ‘global cultural moment’. Perhaps they’d pass through to the gallery next door. As the exhibition room began to close and the lights on the gown dimmed to black, the revenge dress remained… just a dress. A chiffon wisp turned cultural behemoth like its wearer had before it.
‘We’ll forget Diana soon enough,’ the King denies saying shortly after her death. But perhaps we already have in a way. We’re just too obsessed to realise.
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