Princess Diana’s go-to designers included the likes of Catherine Walker, Emanuel, Bruce Oldfield and Versace. But one favourite you might be less familiar with is that of Bellville Sassoon – the British couture house founded in 1958 by Belinda Bellville and David Sassoon, who has died at the age of 92.
The royal’s relationship with the brand first began when she visited the Bellville Sassoon store in London’s Knightsbridge in 1981, to look for an outfit to wear for her engagement photographs. An unwitting shop assistant, not recognising the then Diana Spencer, recommended that she go to Harrods instead, per royal curator Matthew Storey, who was behind Kensington Palace’s Royal Style in the Making exhibition in 2021.
Luckily, Diana later returned to the Bellville Sassoon store with her mother, Frances Shand Kydd, herself a long-time client of the couture house, and commissioned the designers to make her “going away outfit” following her wedding: a peach silk dress featuring a white ruffled collar.
“Many people don’t know that the relationship between Bellville Sassoon and Princess Diana started when she was only 19 years old,” Cherie Balch, vintage collector and founder of Shrimpton Couture, tells Vogue. “This was the beginning of a lifelong collaboration and they ended up designing over 70 outfits for her over her lifetime.”
Those included some of her most recognisable looks, including the embellished red dress she sported for the premiere of 1981 James Bond film For Your Eyes Only; the pale blue chiffon evening gown that she wore to a V&A gala later that year; and the floral tea dress she was famously photographed wearing at a polo match in 1988.
While Bellville Sassoon – which is now run by Lorcan Mullany, who joined the brand in the late ’80s, following the retirement of Bellville – also created designs for other high-profile clients such as Audrey Hepburn, Jackie Kennedy and Elizabeth Taylor back in its heyday, it’s the couture house’s relationship with Princess Diana that it will forever be remembered for. “She broke the rules of royal dressing – but the results were captivating and spectacularly popular,” Sassoon wrote in his book, The Glamour of Bellville Sassoon. “Diana made regal style contemporary – no mean feat, and Belinda, Lorcan and I are proud to have played a part in this.”
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