Today's Edition
LONDON (NYT)
It was the black sheep amid rows of white that stood out most prominently on Princess Diana’s bright red sweater in 1981. Decades after her death, the iconic fashion item sold for $1.14 million in New York this week, breaking auction records.
The princess, then Lady Diana Spencer, was widely popular with the general public, but regularly hounded by Britain’s tabloid media during her life. She caused a stir when she first donned the distinctive woolly item ahead of her marriage to Charles - now King Charles III.
The sweater, now known in the British press as the “black sheep jumper,” sold to an unidentified bidder for $1.14 million at Sotheby’s auction house in New York, during its inaugural Fashion Icons auction late Thursday, massively beating pre-auction estimates of $80,000.
The sale established a “new auction record for any article of clothing worn by the late Princess, as well as the most valuable sweater ever sold at auction,” Sotheby’s said in a statement. It ousted the previous record for a sweater - a green cardigan belonging to musician Kurt Cobain, which sold for $334,000 in 2019.
Diana’s sweater garnered a total of 44 bids from 12 countries, culminating in a final frenzy after a 15-minute bidding battle, the auction house said. It was worn as she attended one of Charles’s polo matches, when she was 19.
The auction lot included two official letters sent from Buckingham Palace in 1981 to the small London design company “Warm & Wonderful,” politely explaining that the jumper had a damaged cuff and requesting a repair. The company’s co-founders, Joanna Osborne and Sally Muir, sent a new replacement sweater that Diana wore again in 1983 to another polo match. The damaged original was found by Osborne in a small box in an attic this year, Sotheby’s said. They subsequently confirmed it to be the original jumper worn by Princess Diana.
