An iconic red sweater worn by Princess Diana shortly after her engagement to then-Prince Charles, featuring rows of fluffy little sheep, sold at auction for more than $1.1 million following a frenetic bout of final bidding, Sotheby’s announced on September 14, 2023. File
| Photo Credit: AFP

An iconic red sweater worn by Princess Diana shortly after her engagement to then-Prince Charles, featuring rows of fluffy little sheep, sold at auction for $1.1 million following a frenetic bout of final bidding, Sotheby’s announced Thursday.

The 19-year-old sported the knit garment — which includes one black sheep amid dozens of otherwise white wooly creatures — at a June 1981 polo match during her whirlwind days as a shy royal-in-the-making.

The playfully patterned “Black Sheep” sweater became one of the most emblematic articles of clothing worn by Diana, which in hindsight seems to foretell her troubled journey as a member of the British royal family.

The garment nabbed $1.1 million — which includes fees and commission — after a fierce battle by internet bidders.

The total was over ten times more than Sotheby’s initial estimate of between $50,000 to $80,000.

Due to an avalanche of bids, the auction house extended the sale by several minutes, with the price leaping astronomically from $190,000 to $1.1 million in the final 15 minutes.

According to Sotheby’s, it is the highest price ever paid at auction for a garment belonging to Princess Diana — eclipsing her Infanta-style ball gown sold in January for $604,800 — as well as the most valuable sweater ever sold at auction.

The sweater was created by then-little-known designers Sally Muir and Joanna Osborne and their knitting company Warm and Wonderful, which was subsequently catapulted to fame.

Weeks after Diana was photographed in the top, the designers received a letter explaining that one of the sweater’s sleeves had suffered damage, and asking if it could be repaired or replaced.

The designers sent her a new one and had assumed the original was repaired and sent to a customer, but in March 2023 Osborne found the sweater in a small box in her attic.

In addition to the sweater, the auction included the letter requesting repair, as well as a thank you note from Diana’s private secretary, Oliver Everett. Diana was seen wearing the replacement at a June 1983 polo match.

Some 40 years later “Black Sheep” was re-released for sale in 2020 in a collaboration between the fashion brand Rowing Blazers and its original designers, Muir and Osborne.

The sweater was so iconic that it even appeared (via replica) in the fourth season of Netflix drama “The Crown,” chronicling the House of Windsor’s recent history.

In newly released audio tapes of Princess Diana, her former husband King Charles expressed his sadness after they learnt that they were expecting a boy and not a girl, when Prince Harry was born, as per ABC Good Morning America. The then Princess of Wales recorded her conversation with her close friend James Colthurst in the 1990s for her biographer, Andrew Morton. She made seven hours of audio in total. Mr Morton later utilised the tapes to create and release ‘Diana: Her True Story’, a book that was published in 1992.

According to ABC’s Good Morning America, ‘Diana: The Rest of Her Story’, a new documentary, will include the footage, which was made public the day after the 26th anniversary of her death. She said in the clip that her husband spoke to her stepmother, Raine Spencer at their second son’s christening. “Because at Harry’s Christening, Charles went up to mummy and said, ‘You know we were so disappointed, we thought it would be a girl,'” The Princess added, “And mummy snapped his head off and said, ‘You should realize how lucky you are to have a child that’s normal.”

“Ever since that day, the shutters have come down. That’s what he does when he gets somebody answering back at him,” Princess Diana said in the tapes.

She also spoke about her strained relationship with her stepmother in the audio clips. Princess Diana added, “I was so angry. I said ‘I hate you so much. If you only knew how much we all hated you for what you’ve done. You ruined the house. You spent Daddy’s money. I have said everything I possibly could. Raine said, ‘You have no idea how much pain your mother put your father through.'”

The late Princess responded, ‘Pain, Raine? That’s one word you don’t even know how to relate to. In my job and in my role, I see people suffer like you’ve never seen. And you call that pain? I said, you’ve got a lot to learn.’ I remember really going for her gullet.” She also stated that her siblings did not get along well with their stepmother and all of them called her “Acid Raine”. They frequently sang, “Raine, Raine, go away!”, as per the outlet.

Mohamed Al-Fayed was an outspoken and successful Egyptian business tycoon. His death comes almost 26 years to the day after the car crash in Paris that killed his eldest son, Dodi, and Diana, Princess of Wales, on August 31, 1997.

Here are five points on the self-made billionaire:

London:

Mohamed al-Fayed, the self-made Egyptian billionaire who bought the Harrods department store and promoted the discredited conspiracy theory that the British royal family was behind the death of his son and Princess Diana, has died, his family said.

Born in the Egyptian city of Alexandria, al-Fayed began his career selling fizzy drinks and then worked as a sewing machine salesman. He built his family’s fortune in real estate, shipping, and construction, first in the Middle East and then in Europe.

Although al-Fayed owned establishment symbols such as Harrods, Fulham, and the Ritz hotel in Paris, he was always an outsider in Britain, tolerated but not embraced.

He fell out with the British government over its refusal to grant him citizenship of the country that was his home for decades and often threatened to move to France, which gave him the Legion of Honour, its highest civilian award.

Al-Fayed – who could be charming, autocratic, vindictive, and at times wildly outspoken – spent 10 years trying to prove Diana and his son Dodi were murdered when their car crashed in a road tunnel in Paris in 1997 as they tried to outrun paparazzi photographers on motorbikes.

Unsupported by any evidence, according to the inquest into Diana’s death, he claimed that she was bearing Dodi’s child and accused Prince Philip, the queen’s husband, of ordering Britain’s security services to kill her to stop her from marrying a Muslim and having his baby.

Al-Fayed died on Wednesday, his family said, a day before the 26th anniversary of Dodi and Diana’s death.

“Mrs Mohamed Al Fayed, her children and grandchildren wish to confirm that her beloved husband, their father and their grandfather, Mohamed, has passed away peacefully of old age,” the family statement read.

While al-Fayed was known for self-invention, exaggeration, and boasting, he was also a central figure in key moments in Britain’s recent history.

His rancorous takeover of Harrods in 1985 sparked one of Britain’s most bitter business feuds, while in 1994 he caused a scandal with the disclosure that he had paid politicians to ask questions on his behalf in parliament.

Like many billionaires, al-Fayed spurned convention. He once said he wanted to be mummified in a golden sarcophagus in a glass pyramid on the roof of Harrods.

At the store, where he instituted a dress code – even for customers – which he enforced in person, he installed a kitsch bronze memorial statue of Diana and Dodi dancing beneath the wings of an albatross.

As the owner of Fulham, he erected a larger-than-life, sequined statue of Michael Jackson outside the ground even though the singer only attended one match. When people complained, he said: “If some stupid fans don’t understand or appreciate such a gift, they can go to hell.”

HARRODS TAKEOVER

Much of al-Fayed’s past remained murky – even his date of birth. He said he was born in then British-ruled Egypt in 1933. However, a British government inquiry into the Harrods takeover said 1929.

Al-Fayed became a resident in Britain in 1974 and added the al to his name. Casting this as self-aggrandisement, the satirical magazine Private Eye nicknamed him the “Phoney Pharaoh”.

In 1985 he and his brothers beat businessman Roland “Tiny” Rowland to Harrods, one of the most famous shops in the world.

Al-Fayed hoped that buying the store would win him acceptance in British society. Instead, it led to a series of bitter confrontations.

Rowland took al-Fayed and his brothers to a Department of Trade inquiry, claiming that they had misrepresented their wealth.

The inquiry cast doubt on their origins as part of a wealthy business family, past business connections, and their independent financial resources.

After a quarter of a century of ownership, al-Fayed sold Harrods to Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund in 2010.

Al-Fayed’s application for British citizenship was denied by the government in 1995. He said racism kept him on the fringe of acceptability.

A year earlier, al-Fayed had embarrassed the government by disclosing that he had made gifts and payments to politicians in return for them asking parliamentary questions for him. The so-called “cash-for-questions” scandal ended the careers of four politicians, including one minister.

The allegations of sleaze undermined the Conservatives, who lost a landslide election to Labour leader Tony Blair in 1997.

DIANA AND DODI

That summer, al-Fayed’s son Dodi began a relationship with Princess Diana, who had divorced Prince Charles, the heir to the British throne. Dodi and Diana were pictured by British tabloids on holiday on a yacht in the south of France.

After travelling to Paris, the couple was killed when their Mercedes, driven at high speed by a chauffeur who had been drinking whisky and was trying to evade the paparazzi, crashed into a concrete pillar in the Pont de l’Alma tunnel.

Beset by grief and an overwhelming sense of injustice, al-Fayed spent millions on legal battles to ensure there was an inquest.

When it started in London a decade after the crash, al-Fayed would accuse everyone from the royal family, Prime Minister Blair, Diana’s sister Sarah, the French embalmers of Diana’s body, and the Paris ambulance drivers of being implicated.

But the jury said the couple were unlawfully killed by their chauffeur’s driving. Al-Fayed said he accepted the verdict and gave up legal attempts to show they were murdered.

“I’m leaving the rest for God to get my revenge,” he said.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)