The full history of Princess Diana's complicated relationship with Chanel

When the first images were released last week of Kristen Stewart dressed as Diana, Princess of Wales for her forthcoming film Spencer, the likeness was uncanny, from the thick crop of layered blonde hair to the accurate re-creation of the outfit worn by Diana to the Christmas Day church service at Sandringham in 1993.

How had the film’s costume designer, Jacqueline Durran, found a scarlet coat with just the same broad-shouldered slouchiness as the Princess’s early ‘90s version? It turns out that she had been able to raid Chanel’s archives from the time.

As a Chanel ambassador and ‘modern muse’, Stewart is often dressed by the label for her red carpet appearances. In December, she was given the honour of being the sole attendee at Chanel’s Covid-secure Métiers d’art show.

The house dressed Stewart for her 2016 film, Personal Shopper, and it seems that strategy is back in action again with Spencer. It hasn’t yet been confirmed if every costume will be sourced from Chanel, but the red coat worn by Stewart for the first glimpse of the film is from Karl Lagerfeld’s autumn/ winter 1988-89 collection.

This choice of coat is a particularly significant one. Although the style worn by Diana that Christmas wasn’t a Chanel design, the Princess did have a similar coat by the maison in her wardrobe after a visit to Paris in 1988. With its long lapels and wide-shoulders, there’s a close resemblance between the vintage coat worn by Stewart and the one seen at least twice on Diana, first for the France trip and again in 1992 at Great Ormond Street Hospital.

When the Princess’s first tour to one of the great fashion capitals of the world was confirmed in 1988, she consulted her stylist, Vogue fashion editor Anna Harvey, about what she should wear. She could, after all, have her pick of Paris’s biggest fashion names.

‘We had a chat and I said it would be wonderful to step off the plane wearing a French designer,’ Harvey, who died in 2018, once told The Telegraph. ‘Chanel was the obvious choice, so that was the beginning of the relationship.’ Diana wore the coat with a matching hat and one of Chanel's signature quilted 2.55 bags.

It was the beginning of a relationship with Chanel which would last until Diana’s death in 1997. ‘Later, Hayat Palumbo, a very elegant woman, took her to the couture salon in Paris and she ended up with a few suits,' Harvey added.

But the tale of Chanel and Diana is a little more complicated than this diplomatic dressing success story. The label had come to mind for the Princess years earlier, and not for the happiest reasons.

In taped interviews with a voice coach which appear in the documentary Diana: In Her Own Words (available to watch on Netflix), Diana remembers noticing Prince Charles wearing a pair of cufflinks with ‘two Cs entwined like the Chanel C’, which in the fashion context signifies the house's founder, Coco Chanel, who took inspiration for the logo from the patterns on the stained glass windows at the abbey at Aubazine, where she had been sent to live as child. An argument ensued; ‘So I said, “Camilla gave you those, didn’t she?” He said, “Yes, so what’s wrong? They’re a present from a friend.” And boy, did we have a row. Jealousy, total jealousy. And it was such a good idea, the two Cs, but it wasn’t that clever.’

Chanel didn’t appear in Diana’s wardrobe until the late ‘80s which was unsurprising given that she dedicated herself to being an ambassador for British fashion before that. But after the 1988 tour look, she seems to have harnessed the double meaning of the logo as her marriage came to an end.

On December 9 1992, the separation of the Prince and Princess of Wales was announced by Prime Minister John Major. That day, Diana visited a special needs school in Tyne and Wear wearing a navy Chanel jacket in the same sapphire shade as her engagement ring. Whether this was mere coincidence or an artfully orchestrated example of one outfit speaking a thousand words, we’ll never know, but it was undoubtedly apposite.

Fashion legend goes that Diana swore off Chanel after her separation, keen not to be spotted with a CC on her person. Australian fashion designer and editor Jayson Brundson has described a meeting he had with the Princess in 1996, when she was Down Under for the Victor Chang Research Institute Dinner Dance.

‘She came out holding... handfuls of shoes and bags and just dumped them all down on the couch. Then said, “What do you think?”,’ Brundson told Harper’s Bazaar Australia, ‘so I went through them all and I found a pair of Chanel shoes, and I said, “Well these would look great with the Versace,” and she said “No, I can't wear linked Cs, the double C.” So I asked why, and she said, “It's Camilla and Charles.”’

Diana may not have worn Chanel that night, but she by no means put a moratorium on the label. In fact, some of her most famous latter looks come from the Parisian fashion house.

She appears to have put in a particularly significant order after her 1996 divorce. On Valentine’s Day 1997, the Princess wore a mint green Chanel suit to open a new renal unit at Great Ormond Street Hospital and on March 9, she chose a pale blue tweed suit with a matching Jackie Kennedy pillbox-style hat for Prince William’s confirmation - notably, this two-piece came with CC buttons.

They were sleek, elegant and timeless designs which worked well as part of Diana’s unfussy post-royal uniform. The final time that Diana was seen wearing Chanel was in New York in June 1997 when she was in town for the Christie’s auction of her royal gowns. She re-wore the green suit while out and about in the city, this time adding a pristine white quilted top-handle bag with prominent CC branding.

At the pre-auction reception, Diana dazzled in a short, sleeveless shift dress created for her by Catherine Walker, the designer who had dressed her since her pregnancy with Prince William fifteen years before. On her arm was a giant gold bracelet with what looked like interlinking Cs encrusted with diamonds. Yet this wasn’t a Chanel design, with its Charles and Camilla connotations, but a double crescent bracelet by American jeweller Verdura.

It’s a classic style which is still available today, priced at $67,500. The Cs here signified the crescent moon symbol of Diana, the Roman goddess of hunting. A brilliantly befitting way to reclaim an emblem which, as far back as her honeymoon, had taken on such personal significance for Diana.

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