One of the stranger lots that Martin Nolan, a co-founder of Julien’s Auctions, ever put on the block during his more than two decades in the auction business was a thin slice of cake served at the July 1981 wedding of Diana, Princess of Wales, to Prince Charles. It sold for $2,831.
That was in 2008. Today, Mr. Nolan estimates that it could fetch tens of thousands of dollars.
“We’ve noticed over the years that Diana is highly collectible as an asset class,” Mr. Nolan said in a recent phone interview. “She’s considered a blue chip as an investment. Also, people feel they have a connection to Diana.”
The world had just 16 years to get acquainted with the princess, Mr. Nolan said, referring to the time between her official entrance into public life and her untimely death in 1997. The brevity of that period, he said, has only intensified public fascination. Many now seek out Diana memorabilia in an effort to preserve the connections they feel they had with her.
That demand has pushed auction houses to put an increasing number of her belongings up for sale. This Thursday, Julien’s is auctioning a large collection of her personal effects, alongside a selection of items from other royals including Queen Elizabeth II and Princess Margaret. On offer are Diana’s Lady Dior bag (which was renamed as a tribute to her), dresses and hats and a group of more intimate pieces such as personal letters, birthday cards and holiday cards. A portion of the proceeds from the sale will be donated to Muscular Dystrophy UK.
At high-profile auctions that follow the death of public figures — and continue years later, provided demand remains — items like clothing, furniture, jewelry and photographs are standard. But deeply personal objects have become increasingly common.
When Christie’s auctioned Marilyn Monroe’s estate in 1999, items on offer included her driver’s license, her Screen Actors Guild card and old tubes of lipstick. RR Auction’s sale of Prince memorabilia featured hotel receipts and his personal checkbook. Another Christie’s auction, of former President Ronald Reagan’s estate, included doodles he sketched on White House stationery.
Curators say they include these items because they help contextualize and humanize public figures.
“I get really excited whenever you can see the journey of an individual and really speak to the parts of their history that they’re best known for,” said Elizabeth Siegel, head of private and iconic collections at Christie’s. “It’s also fun when you’re able to lift the curtain into somebody’s personality a little bit.”
For the upcoming Julien’s sale, titled “Princess Diana’s Style & a Royal Collection,” Mr. Nolan is placing special emphasis on style. While her taste in fashion is certainly represented, he said the goal is to show how Diana lived and connected with others, which is why the personal cards and letters are such a key part of the offering.
But there is a curatorial line to walk. “There is a benefit to editing,” Ms. Siegel noted. “We don’t necessarily always recommend selling every single thing that belonged to a person.”
The inclusion of deeply personal letters comes down to more than just storytelling, however. It is also about what items are likely to sell.
These intimate items often carry a lower price tag than a designer bag or antique furniture, which can open up the bidding pool and give buyers who don’t frequent auctions a rare chance to own a piece of history.
So who is buying this stuff?
In the case of Princess Diana memorabilia, it is often super-collectors like Renae Plant.
Ms. Plant, a preschool director in Los Angeles, owns more than 2,700 personal items that once belonged to Diana, a collection she amassed from what she estimates to be over 2,000 auctions.
Her collection includes more than 600 personal letters the princess had written to friends, family, her fitness trainer and her hairstylist. She also owns more than 100 pieces of Diana’s clothing, including the black sheep sweater (not the original, which sold for $1.1 million, but the replacement she was sent after the original developed a hole) and the custom Versace dress she wore on the 1991 cover of Harper’s Bazaar. Ms. Plant is proud to mention that she got that dress by outbidding Kensington Palace, even though she had to mortgage her home to afford the $250,000 winning bid.
Ms. Plant, who felt that Diana’s belongings were “being scattered aimlessly all around the world and being sold to the highest bidder,” saw it as her personal mission to honor the princess’ sartorial and humanitarian legacy. In 2020, she founded The Princess Diana Museum, a digital archive built around her private collection.
Diana actually started the sell-off of many of the items connected to her when, in 1997, just two months before her death, she auctioned off 79 of her gowns through Christie’s, raising $3.25 million for AIDS and cancer charities.
“It’s hurting my heart again to kind of see this big collection go out at one time and not be able to preserve them for the museum, because I feel like that’s where they deserve to be, not in someone’s cupboard,” said Ms. Plant.
Ms. Plant, whose collection is currently stowed in two storage units in Los Angeles, plans to organize a touring exhibition next year to bring the museum across the United States, Australia and Britain.
But before that can happen, Ms. Plant is eyeing an acquisition: the princess’ Bellville Sassoon Floral Day Dress, which is frequently called the “Caring Dress” because of how often Diana wore it when visiting the sick. That dress is part of the Julien’s auction on Thursday.
Ms. Plant saw the dress up close when Diana wore it in 1988 to greet crowds outside St. Andrew’s Cathedral in Sydney, Australia. Because of her own personal history with the dress, Ms. Plant believes it would complete her collection.
“I am going to bid live,” she said. “I like to see the room, feel the room. I am a very strategic bidder and I always fall on the floor when I win. I do a whole stunt move.”
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