Princess Diana Refused to Wear Chanel Post-Divorce Due to Prince Charles and Camilla's Initials
Princess Diana was the queen of revenge dressing in post-divorce ensembles from Christian Dior and Versace, but one designer was shut out from her closet.
Following the public fallout of her divorce to Prince Charles in August 1996 and his relationship with Camilla Parker Bowles, the People’s Princess could no longer bring herself to wear Chanel in public due to the label’s iconic logo.
“She said, ‘No, I can’t wear linked C’s, the double C,’ ” Australian designer Jayson Brundson recalled of in a recent interview with Harper’s Bazaar.
Brundson was assisting in styling the late royal for a hospital charity event during what would be her last visit to Australia in 1996. When he chose a pair of Chanel shoes to compliment her cream Versace skirt suit, Diana gave a specific reason for choosing not to wear them.
“I asked why, and she said, ‘It’s Camilla and Charles,’ ” he said, remembering the reason why Diana refused to be dressed in Chanel clothing and accessories.
“It was definitely the timing, it being post-divorce. She would have seen linked C’s and they would have just reminded her of Charles and Camilla,” Brundson said. “The shoes were quite boldly Chanel, I think they had gold linked C’s on them. And I think for photo optics, people would have honed in on that considering it was so fresh after the divorce as well.”
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This was not the first time Diana disliked interwoven Cs.
During her marriage to Charles, Diana noticed the prince would wear a pair of gold cufflinks engraved with interwoven Cs — which she took to mean Charles and Camilla.
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“It’s hard to believe that anyone as intelligent and well-read as the Prince of Wales could be so stupid — so utterly incapable of imagining what a new wife might conclude if her husband carried a photograph of his old girlfriend in his diary,” Penny Junor, author of The Duchess: The Untold Story, claimed of the cufflink incident in an excerpt from the book.
Meanwhile, Chanel does not appear to be a frontrunner on the list of wedding dress predictions for Prince Harry‘s bride-to-be ahead of Saturday’s royal nuptials.
Rumors were swirling that Meghan Markle may wear a wedding gown by London-based label Burberry after her mother Doria Ragland was recently seen at the airport with a Burberry garment bag.