Princess Diana’s Sunburn Led to an Iconic Fashion Moment That “Caused a Sensation”

Princess Diana was well-known and loved for causing a stir with her outfits—especially after her separation from her then-husband Prince Charles. But while she was still married to the royal, Diana and her hairstylist Richard Dalton often made waves and turned out iconic looks, with one such instance stemming from a sunburn that Diana couldn’t shake in time for an event.

Writing in his book, It’s All About the Hair: My Decade with Diana, Princess of Wales, Dalton revealed that he traveled with Diana to Melbourne, Australia, and on October 31, 1985, she told him that she “had a bit of a sunburn around her neck from being out in the hot Australian sun all day”—understandable, as the prince and princess were on their royal tour of the country.

Diana wanted to wear an emerald and diamond necklace, gifted to her as a wedding present from Queen Elizabeth, to a gala dinner dance at the Southern Cross Hotel that night. Dalton wrote that the piece “took my breath away,” and inspired him to get creative.

“This was a totally spontaneous moment where I thought, ‘What should we do for fun,’” the hairstylist wrote. He added, “I said to Diana, ‘Let’s try something different. Why don’t we stick some emeralds in your hair?’”

Reflecting on the moment at the Styling Princess Diana panel for People’s 50th anniversary, Dalton went into more detail about the fateful moment. “I asked Evelyn, her dresser, for six inches of knicker elastic, [the kind used by] grannies,” Dalton said. To turn the choker into a headband, he first tied a piece of the elastic to the necklace, draped the necklace around her forehead, and then fastened it in the back to “fit comfortably without falling off, and styled her hair around it,” he wrote in the book. “Diana absolutely loved it, and I never traveled without knicker elastic again.”

Dalton went on to describe the “necklace-as-headband” moment as “my first big statement,” he wrote. “And as they say, the rest is history.” He added, “I love that necklace. We caused such a sensation that night.”

In the time since, the iconic necklace has made a reappearance, with Kate Middleton wearing it around her neck—as intended—to the Earthshot Prize Awards ceremony in Boston in 2022.