The story behind the Blee Cannes dress from 1987 of Princess Diana in 1987

When Prince Charles and Princess Diana invaded the 1987 Cannes Film Festival for a 10 -hour visit, the Blue Tulle dress of the Princess of Wales paid tribute to her royal mentor, who died five years ago in a car accident – the same fate as, tragically, Diana herself was confronted in 1997.

In 1987, Diana brought Catherine Walker while she and Charles visited the film festival to promote the British film industry. As she wore her now iconic blue dress, she and Charles took a screening of the film Bette Davis August whales And attended a gala dinner before jumping on a plane to return directly to London in Nice.

Diana’s sweet blue dress was accompanied by “a matching muslin scarf that completed her neck and was swallowed behind as she was walking”, according to British Vogue. The scarf was a dramatic accompaniment of the dress, because it continued to “catch the breeze which was at the top of the evening of the screening of the film”, ” Nowsweek reported. Diana’s dress was inspired by Grace Kelly, who, after her marriage to Prince Rainier III of Monaco, became Princess Grace of Monaco. Cannes had a special link with the end of the princess, because she met her future husband, Prince Rainier, in April 1955, almost exactly a year before their marriage in April 1956.

Diana and Catherine Walker were inspired by a Blue Edith head dress that the winning actress of an Oscars Grace had worn in the film by Alfred Hitchcock in 1955 To catch a thief“Which, rightly, was filmed on the French Riviera”, according to British Vogue. Like Diana’s decision to recreate it, the cool blue shade was deliberately chosen for the character of Grace, Frances Stevens. As Hitchcock explained in an interview of 1962 (via Marie Claire), “I deliberately photographed Grace Kelly Ice-Cold and I continued to cut her profile, in the classic, beautiful and very distant.”

Flash in 1987, and Diana wore her dress with flat blue shoes, aiguamarin earrings and diamond chandeliers and a matching bracelet. Diana had met Grace in March 1981, just after announcing her commitment to Prince Charles and before their marriage on July 29 of the same year. Lady Diana Spencer, as J. Randy Taraborelli wrote in her book Once upon a time: behind the fairy tale of Princess Grace and Prince RainierMade into tears in front of grace while the two touched their makeup in the Chamber of Dames to a royal commitment.

While she was preparing to get married in the royal bubble in four months, Diana, Taraborelli wrote: “Plan a life totally devoid of intimacy. She was afraid. What could she do?

Grace, then 51 years old at the age of Diana 19, put her arms around her young royal counterpart and tapped Diana on her shoulder before correcting Diana’s face in her hands: “Don’t worry, my dear,” said Grace. “You see, it will only get worse.”

When Grace died in September 1982, Diana insisted that she attended the funeral of Grace in Monaco, even if Diana had just given birth to her firstborn, Prince William, three months ago. Diana found thanks “wonderful and serene,” she told her biographer Andrew Morton, but added that “there was disturbed water under her. I saw this. ”

Diana’s fashion choices often said so much without saying a word – and its Cannes look was no exception. The tribute of the princess of the country of Wales in Grace did not go unnoticed and “as for all the looks of Diana, a lot of reflection and preparation had entered the moment”, ” Tatler reported.

Diana still renamed the dress two years later, at the premiere of the musical in 1989 Miss Saigon; Later, she chose the Cannes dress to be part of her Christie’s auction in 1997, where she put on sale 79 of her most emblematic dresses just a few months before Diana met her own tragic death in a car accident. The dress sold $ 70,700 in 1997 and was auctioned in 2011. It finally sold in 2013 for more than $ 132,000, and in 2017, the dress was exhibited in the old house in Diana, Kensington Palace, as part of a special exhibition to mark the 20th anniversary of Diana’s death.