Elsa Hosk wears Princess Diana’s ‘Revenge Dress’ for Halloween
Victoria’s Secret model Elsa Hosk recreated one of the most infamous looks in royal family history for Halloween: That of Princess Diana iconic ‘revenge dress’.
Hosk, 35, went to Instagram on Thursday, October 31, to share a carousel of images of her replicating the black dress Princess Diana wore in 1994.
“Wishing you an ICONIC Halloween🖤,” Hosk captioned the post.
The model also posted an Instagram reel, where she showed off the replica outfit, complete with an eerily similar necklace to the one the late princess wore at the time.
‘The princess of the people 👑‘ she wrote via Instagram.
Diana’s original ‘revenge dress’ was a Christina Stambolian design, with a low-cut off-the-shoulder bodice and a relatively short hemline.
The outfit was a relatively daring sartorial choice for everyone in the royal circle, with the family traditionally opting for more subdued fashions.
Diana’s decision to wear the dress – and the reason it was described by the public as a ‘revenge dress’ – was the timing of her debut. Diana stepped out in the dress for a gala at the Serpentine Gallery on June 29, 1994 – the same evening Prince Charles confessed on TV that he had been unfaithful to Diana with his mistress Camilla Parker Bowles.
“It’s a very unfortunate event, but it does happen, and unfortunately it happened in this case,” Charles said in the ITV documentary: Charles: The private man, the public role, which aired a year and a half after the couple’s divorce.
In the same interview, Charles was asked if he had tried to be “faithful and honorable” to his wife, to which he replied, “Yes. Until it broke beyond repair after we both tried.”
A year later, Diana also opened up about the former couple’s marital problems in a controversial interview on the BBC Panorama.
“Do you think Mrs. Parker Bowles was a factor in the failure of your marriage?” journalist Martin Bashir Diana asked.
She responded with a line that would soon become infamous: “Well, there were three of us in this marriage, so it was a little crowded.”
Diana and Charles formally divorced in August 1996 after 15 years of marriage. The princess died in August 1997 at the age of 36. The king and Camilla married in April 2005.
Meanwhile, the ‘revenge dress’ could have looked very different from the dress that eventually became famous.
Claudia Josephsaid the author of Diana: A Life in Dresses, which explores the late princess’s fashion evolution We weekly in February 2023 that the late princess almost wore something else.
“The story behind wearing the ‘Revenge Dress’ is quite interesting,” Joseph told Us. ‘She had gone into Christina Stambolian’s clothing store with her brother Charlie Spencer and he sat there while she tried on clothes.
The writer explained that Diana ordered the memorable off-the-shoulder dress, but she originally “wanted it in white.” Joseph continued, “But Christina said, ‘No, no, I think it would look better in black.’”
However, Diana was not convinced. ‘She was [groaning] about it, but Christina kept insisting, ‘This looks great on you,'” Joseph said Us.
She eventually obliged and ordered the piece in black. On the day of the Serpentine Gallery event, it was leaked to the British press that Diana would be wearing Valentino, which did not look good on her.
“She got quite angry about that, so she went to her closet and her butler suggested that she… [Stambolian]and of course it was called the “Revenge Dress,” Joseph claimed.