20 Items Princess Diana Loved You Can Still Buy Today – HT
This is BBC Warm & Wonderful. Princess Diana died in Paris in 1997 when she was only 36 years old. They called her the people’s princess, but maybe they should have called her the shopping princess because Diana turned everyday items into time capsules. The crazy part is most of them are still out there.
You can still buy her famous sweater, bag, shoes, boots, and even fragrances tied to her memory. What does it mean when a princess is remembered not only by a sapphire ring or a revenge dress, but by jeans, gym clothes, and rain boots? Maybe the crown was never the point. The first item almost tells the whole story on its own. She’s 19 years old, not yet a princess, just Lady Diana Spencer.
Cameras everywhere. Royal wedding only weeks away. She shows up to a polo match wearing a red sweater. Cute sheep all over it. Even before the public understood the royal drama, the sweater was already telling the truth. She was the odd one out in the royal flock. The brand was called Warm & Wonderful. Two friends, Joanna Osborne and Sally Muir, are selling sweaters out of a market stall in London’s Covent Garden.
They made that sheep design in 1979, sold a few, nothing special. Then Diana wore it. The next day photos of Diana in the sweater appeared on the front pages of newspapers around the world. It became so famous that in 2023, Diana’s actual sweater, the one she wore, sold at Sotheby’s for $1.1 million. Over a million dollars for a sweater.
The brand stopped making it in 1994. For decades, it was a collector’s holy grail. Then in 2020, American clothing brand Rowing Blazers partnered with Warm & Wonderful to relaunch the design. It sold out almost instantly and it keeps coming back. Available in the original red and other colors, around 200 USD.
Not cheap, but you’re buying a piece of fashion history and maybe the most famous sweater in the world. The sweater may be the most famous, but it was far from the only surviving piece of Diana style world. For the countryside and for those Balmoral type images royal families love to produce, Diana wore Barbour wax jackets.
Barbour’s whole identity is tied to British outdoor life and the company still sells its famous jackets. So do the tall Hunter rain boots. Hunter still sells the original tall boots handcrafted from 28 parts of natural rubber. And the trench coat. The Kensington trench is still sold by Burberry, still made in England, still cut from shower resistant cotton gabardine.
Diana wore trench coats often enough and all three pieces are still easy to find in current collections from Barbour, Hunter, and Burberry. One of the most photographed women on Earth helped make rain gear aspirational. Then come the sunglasses. Diana wore Ray-Ban aviators and Ray-Ban Wayfarers. Both the aviator classic and the original Wayfarer are still selling today.
At the Guards Polo Club in Windsor on May 2nd, 1988, Diana wore high-waisted jeans, Levi’s with a British Lung Foundation sweatshirt, boots, a cap, and a blazer. This is one of those images that should not work and yet works so well that it feels unfair. People later called it a masterclass in casual dressing.
And that outfit still exists in pieces you can actually buy. Levi’s still sells the 501 line. Ralph Lauren still sells Oxford shirts and caps. J.Crew still sells sharp navy blazers and brown cowboy boots still exist. The white shirt is one of the wardrobe classics that defined her image. Diana typically paired it with denim, either half tucked or left open at the neck, and finished the look with loafers.
Her look sent a clear message, “I am comfortable and modern. I don’t need to be draped in heavy jewels to be important.” Decades later, that white shirt remains an essential staple in every classic wardrobe. Now let’s talk about Diana’s perfumes. People close to Diana said fragrance mattered to her.
Mary Greenwell, her makeup artist, said that Diana always always wore scent. Something invisible. Something that only exists if another person comes close enough. One fragrance repeatedly linked to her is Penhaligon’s Bluebell and it is a very British choice. Damp woodland, spring air. In other words, perfect. And you can still buy it today for about $210 for a 100 ml bottle.
Diana loved Bluebell so much that when Meghan Markle later chose Jo Malone’s Wild Bluebell as her signature scent, royal watchers immediately noticed the echo. Coincidence? Maybe. Or maybe it was a quiet nod. Let’s move on to the wedding day, July 29th, 1981. St. Paul’s Cathedral. 750 million people are watching on television worldwide.
She walks down that aisle in the dress, the one with the 25-foot train. She’s 20 years old, shaking, cameras flashing like lightning. She’s wearing Quelques Fleurs L’Original, a perfume from 1912. It smells like tuberose, rose, and jasmine. Heavy, romantic, old-fashioned, the opposite of Bluebell. According to those behind the scenes, Princess Diana was said to be so nervous before she walked down the aisle to marry Prince Charles that she spilled her wedding perfume all over herself.
Quelques Fleurs L’Original is still available. Another fragrance linked to Diana is First by Van Cleef & Arpels. Reports on Prince Harry’s memoir describe it as her favorite perfume. Van Cleef & Arpels still sells it and the fragrance itself dates to 1976. There was also Hermès 24 Faubourg, another fragrance repeatedly tied to Diana by reputable coverage and by her former butler, Paul Burrell.
24 Faubourg came out in 1995. It’s a warm, sophisticated blend of orange blossom, jasmine, and vanilla. A perfume for a woman who’s found herself. That’s what Gianni Versace said about Diana in those years. “There’s a kind of serenity. It is a moment in her life when she’s found herself, the way she wants to live.
” And scent was only one part of Diana’s quiet elegance. Her watches told a story, too. Diana was most closely associated with two Cartier Tanks. First, the Tank Louis Cartier. Then later the Tank Française. The first one, the Tank Louis, reportedly was a gift from her father, Earl Spencer. Gold, simple, clean lines.
She wore it everywhere, both formal and off-duty settings. Second one, the Tank Française, was more formal, yellow gold with a distinctive bracelet integrated case. Story has it that after Diana’s death, William chose her Cartier watch while Harry kept her sapphire engagement ring only to later gift it to his brother for his proposal to Kate Middleton.
It’s a touching tale of brotherly love that endured for decades. But in his memoir Spare, Harry dismissed it as rubbish, clarifying that William had actually held on to the ring from the very beginning. Cartier still makes the Tank, the same designs, Tank Louis, Tank Française. You can buy one today.
They start around $4,300. Not cheap, but not millions, either. Diana did not just make watches unforgettable, she also helped turn one Chanel bag into a legend. During her 1988 visit to France, Diana wore Chanel as a diplomatic gesture to honor her hosts. She became so fond of a specific 1989 curved flap bag that Karl Lagerfeld eventually renamed the design the Diana in her honor.
She wore it for years along with the brand’s classic suits and shoes until her divorce changed her relationship with the logo forever. Diana stopped wearing Chanel after the split. Why? Because of the interlocking Chanel CC logo. Every time she looked at her handbag, she saw Charles and Camilla together, the affair that destroyed her marriage. So she stopped.
Chanel resurrected the Diana bag in 2015 with design changes for their spring collection. You can find vintage ones on resale sites, thousands of dollars. But Diana never stopped using fashion to send a message and her next favorite bag told a very different story. The Gucci bamboo handled tote, big, boxy, and bold, became Diana’s gym bag in the early ’90s.
Paparazzi shot her leaving the Chelsea Harbour Club in bike shorts and an oversized sweatshirt, Gucci tote swinging from her arm. That became the famous Diana gym look. The look that said, “I don’t care anymore. I’m done performing.” It was the most relatable thing a royal had ever done. In 2021, Gucci creative director Alessandro Michele reissued it as the Gucci Diana complete with neon leather belts around the handles as a nod to the bands that originally kept the bamboo in shape. Prices start around $3,600.
The tote helped define the image, but it was the full silhouette that changed fashion. The bike shorts matter because they were a rebellion against royal stiffness. Today, they are everywhere again and current styles are easy to find from all brands. The same goes for the thick white crew socks, which became part of those inescapable gym exit photos.
Yet, the look was only part of the story. Diana’s gift for choosing timeless accessories was just as powerful. In 1997, Tod’s launched its first ever handbag, a clean-lined leather tote known as the D bag. Diana became its most famous fan, carrying the camel version to everything from the gym to official royal tours.
After her death, the brand renamed it the D bag in her honor. Then, in 2019, Tod’s released a more structured satchel-like update called the D styling bag. Finally, for the fall-winter 2022 season, the house fully revived the icon as the modern D bag, which you can find in stores today alongside vintage D bag originals on the resale market.
Tod’s became one signature. Ferragamo would become another. In 1990, Diana began buying from the Italian brand Salvatore Ferragamo. Reportedly, she had more than 20 calfskin Ferragamo bags with distinctive gold-hooped gancini clasps. The design later became associated with the name Lady Di. Of course, it was.
Ferragamo still sells gancini clasp handbags today, described as a re-release of the Diana clutch created in 1990 for Lady Diana Spencer. But, here’s the moment that mattered most. June 29th, 1994, Charles’ documentary admits the affair. That same night, Diana goes to a Vanity Fair party. Black off-the-shoulder dress by Christina Stambolian, the revenge dress, the dress that said, “You think you destroyed me? Watch this.
” And in her hand, a Ferragamo clutch often identified as a Vara Bow style. Ferragamo still sells Diana clutches and other evening bags today, still carrying that same energy. You want revenge dressing? Start with the accessories. Accessories were part of her language. Then came the bag that would become one of the most famous in the world, the Lady Dior.
Carried today by celebrities, royalty, and fashion influencers worldwide. In September 1995, Diana visited Paris for a Cézanne exhibition. The first lady of France, Bernadette Chirac, handed her a gift. A quilted black handbag with dangling letter charms. It was so new, it wasn’t even on the market yet. Diana fell in love with it, ordered more in different colors, carried it everywhere, with Versace suits, with John Galliano slip dresses, even to the Met Gala in 1996.
Dior renamed it the Lady Dior in her honor in 1996. The Lady Dior starts around $5,000 and goes up from there. It remains one of Dior’s best-selling bags nearly 30 years later. Would the bag be famous without her? Probably. Would it be this famous? Let’s not kid ourselves. It seems like 1996 is the year Diana stopped dressing like the institution wanted and started dressing as she had finally met herself.
All right. Let’s come back down to earth, way down, like $70 sneakers down. Diana wore Superga’s 2750 sneakers with light-wash jeans and a blue blazer. And suddenly, an Italian canvas tennis shoe became the most famous sneaker in the world. Superga has been around since 1911.
They’re lightweight, simple, and about as far from a stiletto as you can get. Catherine, Princess of Wales, Diana’s daughter-in-law, has worn the white version dozens of times since 2016. Just the kind of shoe women wear when they want to move. Diana’s love for practical footwear went beyond sneakers. Loafers and ballet flats were her everyday essentials, largely because she seldom wore high heels during her marriage.
She was the same height as Prince Charles, and she famously kept her heels under 2 in to avoid bruising his ego. She favored Tod’s Gommino driving shoes, owning them in a rainbow of colors like pale blue and tan. It was a style choice that made her appear smaller so she could feel bigger. But, as the marriage crumbled, her confidence and her heels rose.
Her close friend, Jimmy Choo, recalled that her orders progressively grew taller. They just kept creeping up and up. By the time she stepped out in that iconic revenge dress, she was in high Manolo Blahnik stilettos. She was tall again. She was herself again. Soon, Diana’s reinvention would appear in one of the most photographed images of her life.
Summer 1997, South of France, Diana on a yacht with Dodi Fayed, the paparazzi in boats around them, long lenses. She’s wearing a leopard print one-piece, Gotex brand, high-cut legs, athletic, confident. Those are some of the last photos of her alive. Gotex later released a limited edition version based on Diana’s famous swimsuit, and Elizabeth Debicki wore a recreated version in The Crown season 6.
Diana was a woman who liked useful jackets, good loafers, soft sweatshirts, simple watches, dark sunglasses, and the kind of perfume that stayed close to the skin. A woman who understood that clothes could protect you, tease the world, send a message, buy you a little peace, or tell the truth when your mouth could not.
If you loved this story about Diana’s everyday rebellion, you need to watch our video about the royal jewelry. Hit subscribe because we’re not done telling these stories. We’re just getting started.