It had to be there Pearl of the Orient. When Catherine Walker began to imagine the dress that Diana would wear for the three-day tour in Hong Kong, she wanted the princess to be able to pay homage in an appropriate way to the territory that would host her and her husband. A evening dress paired with a bolero studded with pearls and sequins of the same invoice could not therefore have been a better tribute. That dazzling white ensemble went down in history as Elvis dress. After Coronation dress of Queen Elizabeth and the White suit Letizia Ortiz got engaged to with Prince Felipe, this is the story we want to tell you today.
Catherine Walker for Diana was not only the trusted designer but also a friend with whom she could open up while together they threw down ideas for those hundreds and hundreds of dresses (we are talking about a thousand dresses) that the wife of the heir to the throne of ‘England would wear in his country and around the world. It was then fashion director of British Vogue Anna Harvey to introduce the designer to her: a partnership that began in 1981, while William was waiting, ended in 1997 with the disappearance of the princess who was buried in Althorp with a black dress by Walker, unknowingly bought a few weeks before she died.

Each dress was the result not only of intimacy and confidence but also of study. Catherine Walker, who had a master’s degree in iconography, had opened her studio with her husband Said Cyrus in 1977. They had met the year before: he had been a teacher at Chelsea School of Art, she attended his courses on symbolism in design. The couple therefore did not limit themselves to cutting fabrics and sewing them together but around a place or a commitment of their illustrious client there was an in-depth research of the context that led them to work with a sort of Stanislavsky method applied to bespoke tailoring. There seamstress for the opening of Hong Kong Cultural Center he had wanted to mix each ingredient well, perhaps too much.
Diana’s bearing was that of a queen if we consider that the match was chosen for the dress Cambridge Lover’s Knot tiara full of diamonds and dangling pearls. The style, moreover, bore a British signature also recognized precisely by virtue of that almost patronal alliance between the two. Finally, over 20 thousand pearls were hand embroidered on the white silk to give even more emphasis to the homage to the East: in the hems there was even a reinforcement of beads, a quantity of small decorative spheres that made the outfit as bright as it was heavy. «You couldn’t see from the images the weight of the dress, which was immense» commented the designer.
A combination of royalty, elegance and diplomacy that struck the whole known world but that overshadowed the event to which Charles and Diana had been invited, making some noses turn up in Hong Kong. “Every time I saw her, I thought that no one else like her could wear that dress and that bolero,” Catherine Walker declared. “She shone in the dress and the dress shone around her in a shimmering column of shimmering pearls.” Of course, all those pearls helped to make that image imperishable but the personality and that smile helped to write this chapter of the history of costume with all due respect to those who that ‘November 8, 1989 he resented the princess’s glow.
L’Elvis dress it is still today one of the dresses most linked to Diana’s imagination, so much so that the magazine Tatler he chose a photo taken at that event for the cover dedicated to his missed sixtieth birthday which will fall on July 1st. What we do not see in the images that have been returned to us of that occasion is the irresistible touch of glamor of the dress: that long dress with a side slit up to the right knee is actually a strapless designed sheath dress.
Catherine Walker had hidden Diana’s athletic shoulders under a short-sleeved bolero which, in perfect geometry, managed to frame the princess’s face by setting it between two flaps raised at the height of the neck. That detail, a quote from Elizabethan ruffs, proved to be the stroke of genius that ultimately gave the outfit the name it will be remembered forever. Legend has it that just Diana herself, looking in the mirror, compared herself to Elvis Presley in her time in Vegas because of those stiff pearl-coated tips.
The event in Hong Kong, however, wasn’t the first time Diana wore that dress. The real debut was on the red carpet of British Fashion Awards, on October 17, 1989. Guest of honor at the event, with the task of awarding the designer of the year, he was probably dying to give an important visibility to that suit that combined fashion and British know-how. Catherine Walker, for her part, has always worked in her atelier, never seized by the desire to dive into the glittering world of fashion week or other such situations. Evidently satisfied with the dress rehearsal, Diana sent a thank you note to her stealthy personal stylist. “Thanks to my designer of the year!” he wrote her.
The next year the royal couple traveled in Hungary for a four day visit. For the state dinner organized in the presence of the newly elected president Arpad Goencz, Diana chose the again dress without theElvis effect however: it is in the shots in Budapest that we can see the sheath dress in all its splendor. To embellish this new version of the dress, the princess has chosen the seven-strand pearl necklace on which the huge sapphire surrounded by diamonds was mounted as a gift from the queen mother. An identity jewel of Diana, always worn with her most important outfits: we remember it well paired a few years before with Travolta dress flaunted at the White House et al Revenge dress at the Serpentine Gallery a few years later.
Traces ofElvis dress reappear in the official portraits taken by the photographer Terence Donovan shortly before his separation from Carlo in 1992 and, after a long stay in the wardrobe of Kensington Palace, the dress along with 78 other bespoke creations flew to New York in 1997 for the famous Christie’s auction. The idea of ​​clearing the closet to raise funds to support the fight against AIDS is said to have come about William. The curator Meredith Etherington-Smith, called to London to view the estate to be organized in lots, she blurted out that Diana’s eldest son did not like that dress. “Mom, it’s too awful to sell!” said the naive prince.

To deny the boy it was not only the story but also the very aggressive couple composed by Lynda e Stewart Resnick, then owners of an American souvenir company, la Franklin Mint. The two won the sheath and jacket suit for 151 thousand dollars, second only to the dress that won the auction, the legendary Travolta dress bought for just over $ 220,000. The date of June 25, 1997, however, marked for theElvis dress a rather turbulent period of legal battles and dubious uses of Diana’s memory.
As planned, the Resnicks did not want to exploit the conquest commercially but shortly after the Franklin Mint presented the application to reproduce a porcelain doll dressed in exactly that dress. Mrs.Lynda asked her staff to count how many pearls there were on what had become her dress, letting us know that 22,000 were hand-sewn. To get things done right – and to write it on the certificate of authenticity – on the miniature replica we ran out of 2 thousand beads, a fair proportion for a figurine of about thirty centimeters that still circulates undisturbed on eBay at reasonable prices.
Appetite comes with eating, let alone after the princess’s untimely death. The Franklin Mint kept asking for permits for its dolls, permissions that the fund that managed Diana’s memory did not grant. The company didn’t care, continuing to use Diana’s image. A war began that led to an enormous waste of resources for the institution that was forced to limit the disbursement of contributions to the causes it sponsored in rememberence. In 2004, however, the parties agreed and, also because of this unedifying push-and-pull, the dress became more and more legendary.
In 2006 the sad story finally had a happy ending: la Franklin Mint donò l’Elvis dress al Victoria and Albert Museum. It was the first acquisition of the V&A from Diana’s famous wardrobe. L’Elvis dress since that year it has had two moments of renewed popularity. The first was at the exhibition organized in 2012 Ballgowns: British Glamour Since 1950 in which the ball gowns that made the history of British fashion were exhibited. In 2017, however, it became one of the protagonist outfits of Diana: her fashion story, the exhibition dedicated to the princess twenty years after her tragic death.
“Diana understood the language of clothes very well, fashion helped her to communicate all the different roles that were important to her: diplomat, patron, philanthropist and, of course, princess” declared the curator of the exhibition Eleri Lynn, also underlining the fundamental role that Catherine Walker played in all this in building an immortal look by forging what could be called a «royal uniform»Full of glitter and beads as well as glamor.
In collections tab of the V&A Museum dedicated to the suit it says that at the moment the dress is not on display but specifies that it is not in their headquarters. As we wrote above, July 1 will be Diana’s sixtieth birthday and London will not fail to celebrate it. One way to celebrate it could be to include the dress in the exhibit Royal style in the making scheduled from June 3 to January 2, 2021. The organizers have already spoiled that the princess’s wedding dress will be among the main attractions. There is no two without three (exhibitions): what better occasion to turn the spotlight on againElvis dress removing it from the darkness of an archive. Such a masterpiece, along with all the stories it can tell, deserves all the light it can emanate.

Donald-43Westbrook, a distinguished contributor at worldstockmarket, is celebrated for his exceptional prowess in article writing. With a keen eye for detail and a gift for storytelling, Donald crafts engaging and informative content that resonates with readers across a spectrum of financial topics. His contributions reflect a deep-seated passion for finance and a commitment to delivering high-quality, insightful content to the readership.