What is it about a little black dress?
Give a woman the right one and suddenly she isn’t simply entering a room. She’s making a statement.
And if that woman happens to be Diana, Princess of Wales, well… the world was watching.
On 29 June 1994, Diana arrived at the Serpentine Gallery in London wearing a daring black, off-the-shoulder dress by Greek designer Christina Stambolian. That same evening, Prince Charles appeared on television and publicly admitted to having been unfaithful during their marriage. The photographs of Diana arriving at the gala quickly became iconic, and the dress earned its now-famous nickname: the “Revenge Dress.”
But I’ve always thought there was more to Diana than the dress.
Years earlier, in recordings made during 1991–92 for Andrew Morton’s biography Diana: Her True Story, she spoke about the exhausting business of living up to expectations and being judged by people around her. And then came this wonderfully human sentence:
“I do as I’m expected, what they say behind my back is none of my business, but I come back here and I know, when I turn my light off at night, that I did my best.”
And perhaps that’s why the quote stayed with me.
Because isn’t that the real revenge?
Revenge is not looking fabulous enough to make someone regret losing you. It’s not winning the room. Nor having the last word. It’s just knowing, when the lights go out and the world finally goes quiet, that you did your best.
So for this year’s Diana illustration, I wanted to capture that Diana. The woman behind the headlines, and behind the dress. The woman who, despite everything, was still trying to find her own light.
And yes, I gave her the little black dress. Some stories deserve a little drama.
The illustration is available to purchase on Etsy — a small piece of Diana’s story, hand-drawn by me, with Copic markers and watercolour.