Princess Diana Used Her Outfit Choices “To Make Camilla Insane,” Royal Author Tina Brown Says

It’s not a secret that the women of the royal family send subtle—and sometimes not so subtle—messages with the clothing that they choose to wear. Though this is, thankfully, becoming less and less so, oftentimes women of the royal family didn’t speak during royal engagements, so they let their wardrobe do the talking for them. Sometimes the message was one of support for the country they were visiting, either by wearing an outfit by a designer from that nation, or an outfit in one of the colors of their flag. Other times, wearing white was a strategic form of showing support for other women, or a piece of jewelry with a certain stone that matched someone’s birthstone was worn, and on, and on, and on.

But what we didn’t know is that, in the 1980s, Princess Diana used a certain article of clothing to antagonize her husband Prince Charles’ mistress, Camilla Parker-Bowles—and that Camilla got the message loud and clear. 

Before Diana married Charles in 1981, Charles found himself carrying on in the 1970s with not one but two married women: Camilla (who was married to Andrew Parker-Bowles) and Dale “Kanga” Tryon (who was married to Lord Tryon). Both women, royal expert and author Tina Brown said, were “on call for the prince while their husbands looked the other way.”

Of Tryon, “Dale’s directness, warmth, and talent at country entertaining were just the sort of qualities that Charles admired in Camilla,” Brown said. “It did not make Camilla happy that Dale put it about that Charles was said to have declared Dale ‘the only woman who ever understood me.’”

Tryon designed a clothing line known as the Kanga line (after her nickname) and was popular with the set called the “Sloane Rangers”—of which a young Diana Spencer was once a part. Diana eventually married Charles in 1981, and within a few years, his affair with Camilla resumed. According to Brown, in July 1985—“with her jealousy of Camilla at its height,” The Daily Mail reports—Diana chose to wear a very specific outfit to one of the most-watched events of the entire decade. For Live Aid—which had a global television audience of millions—Diana wore a “rather curious polyester frock in polka dots and stripes,” a dress that, because it was so unique, Camilla would see and know exactly who designed it and exactly the message that was being sent.

“Princess Diana wore one of her [Tryon’s] deeply off-brand, multi-patterned dresses just to make Camilla insane,” Brown said. (The dress is in all of the photos here.)

Diana’s likely message? I know you’re the other woman now, the one that Charles turns to and thinks understands him—but remember when there was another woman who Charles turned to instead of you that he thought better understood him. Ouch. Talk about sending subtle and not-to-subtle messages through clothing, saying everything without saying a word. And Diana didn’t wear Tyron’s clothes because of any kind of relationship with her, Brown said. “All this stuff about Lady Tryon being such a friend of Lady Diana—she’s never even met Diana Spencer,” she said. 

And, like he hurt Diana, it seems Charles hurt Tryon, too. Brown said that Tryon believed, as his marriage to Diana unraveled, that Charles would turn to her instead. He did not, and she fell apart, The Daily Mail reports. In an eerie twist, Tryon died at just 49 years old in 1997—the same year that Diana died at just 36 years old.