THE iconic gown Princess Diana wore to a state banquet at the White House in 1985 is currently being held in quarantine.
It has now been revealed that the velvet, midnight-blue Victor Edelstein gown that the people’s princess wore to a 1985 state banquet will soon be on display for the public to see. However, for now the dress is in quarantine until further notice.
The gown was once worn by Princess Diana as she danced with John Travolta during the White House banquet.
Now, the garment has been acquired by Historic Royal Palaces.
Historic Royal Palaces is the charity that manages Diana’s former home, Kensington Palace.
The gown was purchased in December for £220,000.
The valuable item was due to join 10,000 items of royal and court dress in the royal ceremonial dress collection at Hampton Court Palace.
However, in a sign of truly telling times, the coronavirus crisis halted the plans.
Just like the rest of us, the gown has been placed in lockdown and is yet to go on display.
The collections curator, Eleri Lynn, had been preparing the piece for storage when lockdown began.
For now, the gown remains in a workroom appropriately named the “isolation room”.
“The dress is basically still in isolation,” the curator told HELLO!.
She then revealed the newly acquired garment has a long cleaning process ahead of it before it will be put on display.
The piece will be subject to freezing or heat treatment – to get rid of any moths and their eggs – before joining the collection.
She added: “The dress had been frozen and then we left it to thaw out for a few weeks to make sure we were not cracking any fibres or anything like that.
“We would then repack it for more permanent storage within the collection stores.
“But we hadn’t quite finished that process, so it’s still sitting in the isolation room.
“Without a doubt it will be on display again. It is a perfect marriage of form and function and was the perfect dress for that evening.”
There seems to be a keen interest in items owned by Princess Diana right up until this day.
Many of her items have even been auctioned off to a number of lucky bidders.
Now, a number of items used to prepare the princess for her wedding day has become the latest to go up for auction.
This includes a photo copy of the Clive Shilton design of her wedding shoes, as well as press information relating to the production of the slippers.
Up for grabs is also two postcards with a sample of the lace that was used in the production process.
The items will go on sale with Sworder online between 22-31st May.
The Clive Shilton shoes worn by Diana on her wedding day featured more than 500 sequins, over 100 seed pearls, satin and lace, and the arches were adorned with the letters ‘C’ for Charles and ‘D’ for Diana, with a heart between them.
A spare pair was sold in 2011 for more than $50,000.