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The Big Apple “represented freedom” to the former Princess of Wales.
The Gist
- Princess Diana had a “love affair” with New York City—and she last visited the Big Apple in June 1997, just two months before her death.
- It was a visit connected to her son Prince William, as it was he who suggested she auction off 79 of her most iconic looks for charity, which she chose to do in NYC.
- The city was a place where Diana felt loved, “And, like any human being, you’re gonna go where you’re loved,” Martin Nolan of Julien’s Auctions said.
Much attention has been paid—and understandably so—to the final year of Princess Diana’s life, specifically her final summer in 1997.
Ahead of what would be her last birthday, her 36th, on July 1, Diana visited one of her favorite places—New York City—and the trip had a special connection to her eldest son, Prince William. Just two months before the former Princess of Wales’s death in a Paris car crash on August 31, Diana returned to the Big Apple in June 1997, where she attended a preview and reception ahead of the famous Christie’s auction of her dresses. On the advice of William, Diana put 79 of her iconic looks on the auction block, which The New York Times reported ultimately raised $3.25 million for cancer and AIDS charities.
While Diana didn’t attend the auction itself, she did attend the preview party ahead of the sale. Speaking in the 2017 documentary Diana, Our Mother: Her Life and Legacy, William said of the auction (per Hello!), “My mother loved her fashion, she loved her clothes, but she wasn’t a slave to it.”
“I remember walking around her cupboards and there were just so many dresses and so many clothes,” he continued. “And she got so fed up with all the clothes in the cupboards, believe it or not. And I said, ‘Why don’t you give the clothes away? Why don’t you do something charitable with it?’”
And so she did. While Diana “absolutely could have done” the Christie’s auction in London, Martin Nolan of Julien’s Auctions pointed out that the princess chose to take it to the U.S. specifically because “she loved New York.”
“When you think about when Diana, at the behest of her young son William, when he recommended—he said to his mummy, ‘Why don’t you sell some of your frocks for charity?’” Nolan told Hello!. “She chose to do that auction in New York. And that speaks to the fact that she was so loved, so appreciated, so adored, not judged, not expected to behave like a royal should behave like back home—and I think that was the part that was really appealing to her.”
Roughly 1,100 turned out for the auction, many of them New Yorkers. The auction took place less than a year after Diana finally finalized her divorce from Prince Charles in August 1996. “There’s the difference, because at that time there was a divorce within the royal family, which was unheard of, and there were people that blamed Diana back home, and they had expectations for her and how she should behave and what she should wear and how she should dress and where the hemline was on her knee, above or below, and where her neckline was,” Nolan continued.
“New Yorkers didn’t care about that,” he added. “New Yorkers wanted glamour, and if you’ve got it, flaunt it—and I think that’s what she loved about New York. And she also felt that in New York, to do this auction, people are extremely generous, and they would want to own something from her life and career and support her and support her charities.”
Nolan called the Christie’s auction “liberating and cathartic” for Diana “because she was letting go of when she was HRH [Her Royal Highness],” he said. “And now she was free. She was liberated. She wasn’t married anymore.”
The sale, he added, “tells so much about [Diana’s] love affair with New York, her love affair with New Yorkers, but New Yorkers’ love affair with Diana—unjudged, totally supported, respected, and loved. And, like any human being, you’re gonna go where you’re loved.”
It was in New York City in February 1989 when Diana undertook a royal tour that The Mirror reported “changed the way royals approached [visits like this] forever.” It was this trip to the Big Apple that cemented Diana’s moniker of the “People’s Princess”—and was such a monumental trip that it ended up being depicted in Netflix’s series The Crown. While in the city, Diana met AIDS patients at a hospital in Harlem, went to the famous toy store FAO Schwarz, visited with underprivileged children, and attended a gala dinner. “Her open and tactile approach ultimately worked to break down barriers and make royals seem more ‘normal’—something the next generation still do,” The Mirror reported.
“She marked a turning point in the way the royal family behaved, and through her behavior helped to modernize and make more human the royal family,” Diana’s biographer Andrew Morton said on an episode of “Pod Save the King.”
“So it wasn’t big handbags, white gloves, and standoffish,” he said. “It was more touchy-feely than it had ever been in the past. So she made the royal family more relevant to modern times.”
When Diana visited New York City, she always stayed at The Carlyle Hotel—which was the site of her famous meetup with John F. Kennedy Jr. in 1995. In 2014, when William and Kate Middleton visited NYC, they took a page from Diana’s book and stayed at the famed hotel on the Upper East Side, as well.
“They definitely stayed here at The Carlyle because Princess Diana used to stay here, and she was very fond of this hotel, and I know they had heard about it,” the hotel’s former director of communications Jennifer Cooke said in the 2018 documentary Always at The Carlyle. “I heard him [William] say that in the lobby that he heard so much about this hotel through the years and they were really happy to be here.”
Nolan told Hello!, “Everybody at that hotel absolutely loved when Diana would come to town. She was the most sweetest, nicest person they could have. She had her own suite there.”
New York City “represented freedom” to Diana, he added. “It was where she felt the love. She was non-judged, and she could have fun, and Diana loved to have fun, and for a few years there was no fun for her, and suddenly she was starting to embrace life again and enjoy the freedom and enjoy all the great things that New York City has to offer.”
Read the original article on InStyle
