While the belief that looking good in spite of heartbreak is hardly new, Diana’s revenge dress crystallized the idea in pop culture that looking good could just be the best revenge. In reclaiming her narrative by sporting her little black dress, Diana also veritably introduced the concept of the “revenge dress” into the zeitgeist. In the same documentary, Diana’s stylist, former British Vogue editor Anna Harvey succinctly sums the motivation behind her change of heart: “Diana wanted to look a million dollars,” she explained. In an interview featured in Princess Diana’s Dresses: The Auction, a 2013 Channel 4 documentary, Stambolian revealed that Diana had actually bought the gown three years prior but had never worn it because she considered it too “daring,” but that in donning it that night, she “played it like Odile,” the antiheroine black swan from Swan Lake. Diana was allegedly planning to wear a Valentino dress to the gala but made the last-minute decision to wear the figure-hugging black mini-dress.
