Who is Victor Edelstein? The designer behind Princess Diana’s dress that sold for $604,800

The likes of Alexander McQueen and Jenny Packham are the go to designers for Kate Middleton today, but back in the 1980s and 1990s, Victor Edelstein was the favoured designer of her late mother in law, Princess Diana.

A strapless purple evening dress by the designer that Princess Diana wore for a royal portrait in 1991 has just sold in an auction at Sotheby’s New York for $604,800. Sotheby’s revealed that the final bid was five times the pre-auction estimate of $80,000 to $120,000.

According to Vogue, the dress was “one of the Princess’s most recognisable looks: she wore it during an official 1991 portrait with Prince Charles, taken by Lord Snowdon. Later that year, artist Douglas Hardinge Anderson painted her in the gown for a work hung at the Royal Marsden Hospital, one of Diana’s patronages.”

Although Victor Edelstein is not a household name today, he was a pivotal figure when it came to Princess Diana’s fashion choices. The designer originally worked for Christian Dior before starting his own label. “The British designer eventually became one of the key shapers of her wardrobe: he designed the famous midnight blue dress she wore to waltz across the White House floor with John Travolta, as well as a strapless black evening gown worn to the premiere of Dangerous Liaisons,” Vogue revealed.

Sothebys describe the Victor Edelstein purple strapless dress that was sold as a “dramatic ball dress, in ‘infanta’-style from the Collection of Diana, Princess of Wales.” The company goes on to describe the gown in more detail and say it is a “strapless, evening dress of deep, aubergine silk velvet, with a tulip-shaped stiffened skirt, augmented by three paste buttons at the back…”

Although it has not been revealed who bought the dress, there were reportedly four bidders all trying to secure the gown. It would be interesting to know if one of these bidders could have been bidding on behalf of Kim Kardashian. After all, the reality star and influencer recently bought the ‘Attallah Cross,’ a pendant once worn by Princess Diana, which sold for $197,453 at Sotheby’s.