Diana, Princess of Wales, died in 1997. Almost thirty years later her outfits are still quoted on runways, resold at auction and copied in collections made by designers born after her death. That does not happen to every famous woman, and it does not happen because she was famous.

It happens because she used clothes as a sentence, not as decoration.

When a dress is an answer

The best-known example is the black dress with embellished shoulders from 1991 - worn on precisely the day Charles publicly admitted his relationship with Camilla. The cut was tighter and shorter than anything court protocol allowed in that context. Nobody had to explain it. Everyone understood.

Before that, in 1982 and at her Australian debut in 1983, she wore an evening dress with an asymmetric cut that part of the British press judged too daring. Two years later she wore that same dress again, in Washington. That is not thrift. That is an answer.

The stylist who is rarely mentioned

Behind most of those decisions stood Anna Harvey, a former fashion editor who was her image adviser. She bought Diana her first Manolo Blahnik shoes and gave her unreserved support precisely in the periods when the criticism was loudest. She died in 2018, and her name rarely escapes the footnotes.

From the wardrobe: tailored jackets and skirts from the late eighties and early nineties, nipped at the waist, in a run of colours. A polka dot dress as a wedding guest. A checked Wichy dress that is still being recreated today. Sporty outfits from polo matches. Big shoulders, heeled sandals.

From the designers: Chanel, Dior, Versace, Ferragamo, Catherine Walker, David Emanuel for the wedding dress. Dior's small Lady bag is still sold as one of the house's most sought-after models - named after her and never withdrawn.

What of this applies here

None of these pieces is available, and that is not the point. The point is that her wardrobe worked because every choice was hers, in an environment where almost nothing belonged to her. That is why thirty years on it still reads as contemporary, while the wardrobes of far more expensively dressed people from the same period look like costumes for a fancy-dress event.