Princess Diana is still considered a fashion icon who turned heads with her outfit choices. Her style had always been elegant, but it evolved into something more glamorous after her separation from her husband, then-Prince Charles.
Questions have frequently circulated about why Diana began wearing high heels only after problems with her husband began. Some reports suggest that the reason was Charles.
Eloise Moran’s book “The Lady Di Look Book” talked about a claim from the book “Diana: The Untold Story,” by Richard Kay. Here, Moran discussed an outfit Diana wore to pick up Charles from the hospital.
Moran wrote, “Diana styled an unbuttoned chambray shirt over a casual white T-shirt and wore it with a floral knee-length skirt and coordinating, but not quite matching, flat shoes.” She described this as Diana’s “predivorce revenge look,” as reported by Business Insider.
And these are the stunning shoes worn by a young Princess Diana in 1981 during her marriage to Prince Charles of England
They are still preserved by the British royal family and are flat shoes, without heels, extremely posh pic.twitter.com/oply2PRUNQ
— Mambo Italiano (@mamboitaliano__) March 19, 2025
Moran wrote, “For years, Diana wore shoes no higher than two inches out of respect to her husband’s ego… Since he was the same height she was, ”as reported by Daily Express.
Her book also references an incident involving Jimmy Choo. It noted that Diana’s heel lengths changed progressively with the deterioration of her marriage. The book claimed, “As the estranged royal’s confidence grew, so did her heels.”
According to Women.com, Moran wrote, “Jimmy Choo recalled that at the start of their seven-year friendship, Diana always ordered flats, then as her marriage started to crumble, the heels got higher.”
Business Insider elaborated on the excerpt, “First she went up to 2in, then 3in, then 3½ in, then ¾ in. They just kept creeping up and up.”
Apparently, Choo also had a pair of pumps ready for Diana after she returned from a trip to Paris. But he could not deliver it because of the accident that claimed Diana’s life, as reported by Marie Claire.
Moran’s book stated, “She tragically never got to receive them, and Jimmy kept them in his personal collection in remembrance of his friend and best client.”
It was not just shoes that helped the princess make statements. Her dresses also revealed just what she wanted to convey, as mentioned by Women.com.
The “Revenge Dress.” Princess Diana stuns in black during her husband the Prince of Wales’s public admission of infidelity. Kensington Gardens, London. June 29, 1994 pic.twitter.com/SPBWsn7xOO
— Historic Vids (@historyinmemes) September 3, 2025
Diana’s “revenge dress” became one of the most talked-about and controversial dresses ever.
When Prince Charles publicly admitted to having an affair on national television in 1994, Diana made one of her most notable fashion statements. As People reported, in such a situation, many would have avoided a public appearance, but Diana did not.
William Ivey Long, the Broadway musical Diana’s costume designer, explained, “She decided that she was going to fight back, and she decided that she would choose a dress that she had previously rejected as being a little too much. And she would put that on and go out on the town.”
It was a black, off-the-shoulder, fitted dress with a flowing train, designed by Christina Stambolian.
