A Princess Diana Dress from her 1986 Trip to Bahrain Is Going Up for Auction

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published 2 December 2018

How much does it cost to dress like one of the greatest style icons of all time? Right now, the answer is £100,000—for one dress.

That's the going price for an authentic gown that was once worn by Princess Diana during a visit to Bahrain in 1986, during her tour of the Gulf States. The ivory silk gown by David Emanuel (who also designed Diana's wedding dress) isn't the first piece from Diana's personal wardrobe to go on sale—in 2016, for example, The Telegraph reported on three of Diana's dresses that were going up for auction—but this dress has a very unique backstory.

Namely? It's not the first time it's gone up for sale. In 1994, the dress was bought by an unnamed thrifter, who paid just £200 for the gown at a secondhand shop.

How does that happen? According toThe Mirror, the dress was donated to a secondhand store in Hereford by the housekeeper of Mynde Park estate, where Diana's close friend Caroline Twiston-Davies lived. The woman who bought the dress for £200 reportedly knew that the dress had belonged to the Princess of Wales, but says she didn't realize its "importance" at the time.

According to The Mirror, the woman bought the dress to wear to a hunt ball that she never ended up attending. Like so many thrifted dresses before it, the gown sat, unworn, in the woman's closet for years.

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Recently, the woman was watching a documentary about Diana and saw the royal wearing the gown during her trip to the Gulf States. The gown will be auctioned off by Kerry Taylor Auctions of Bermondsey, South London, and its value has been estimated at between between £80,000 and £100,000.

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Auctioneer Kerry Taylor said of the gown's history:

So...who wants to go in on this dress? Anyone?

Kayleigh Roberts is a freelance writer and editor with more than 10 years of professional experience. Her byline has appeared in Marie Claire, Cosmopolitan, ELLE, Harper’s Bazaar, The Atlantic, Allure, Entertainment Weekly, MTV, Bustle, Refinery29, Girls’ Life Magazine, Just Jared, and Tiger Beat, among other publications. She's a graduate of the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University.