15.09.2023
We don't have to pen an essay on the late Princess Diana's style game. Fashion insiders acknowledge that her fashion is eternal. You can already reference the number of trends she helped to popularise over the course of the last decade alone, including bike shorts as casualwear and the revenge dress. Now, her relatable fashion choices is about to get another mention 26 years since her passing. Those who know her catalogue by heart may have came across several pictures of her in a red sweater patterned with white sheep and a solitary black one. She first wore this Warm & Wonderful-made knit as a 19-year-old and then a couple of years later at a polo match with the then-Prince Charles. As a public figure who was often silenced in her role as part of the Royal family, Princess Diana was known to use fashion as a means of putting across her point of view, especially to those who love to spot a good symbolism. It was said that this sweater was her way of labelling herself as the black sheep of the family, one that royalists might regard as self-explanatory. Why this sweater is making headlines this very moment is because Sotheby's is auctioning the original in August. Warm & Wonderful designers Sally Muir and Joanna Osbourne stumbled upon the original in the attic, wrapped up in a bedspread. Osbourne made the discovery recently revealing that back then Princess Diana's reps reached out to them to repair it after she damaged the original – they sent her a new one instead. Sotheby's will be hoping to fetch a good sum for it during the auction, held in conjunction with New York Fashion Week. The auction house has placed a conservative estimate of between US$50,000 and US$80,000 for the sweater. And who knows, this might even go beyond the US$334,000 forked out for Kurt Cobain's cardigan in 2019, making this the most expensive knit of all time. Watch this space.
[UPDATE]: The sweater fetched a record-breaking US$1.1 million at a Sotheby's auction in New York. It garnered 44 bids in a 15-minute frenzy, eventually selling for roughly 14 times more than its estimated price. Take a bow, Warm & Wonderful, as this is now the most expensive sweater of all time. And just in time for a Christmas gathering cameo?
