The Grevin waxwork museum in Paris unveiled a new star attraction on Thursday: Princess Diana in the “revenge dress” she wore after public revelations about her then-husband Prince Charles’s affair.
The popular tourist destination, similar to Madame Tussauds in London, already has models of Charles, who is now King Charles III, and his late mother, Queen Elizabeth II.
But Diana was a notable absentee, despite her tragic association with the city where she died in a car crash in August 1997.
She was displayed on Thursday in a copy of the black gown by designer Christina Stambolian that she wore for a public appearance in 1994 amid a media frenzy about the breakdown of her marriage to Charles.
She stepped out in the dazzling off-the-shoulder dress on the same day as an interview was broadcast in which Charles admitted to being unfaithful.
“More than 28 years after her tragic death in Paris, Diana is still a major figure in global pop culture, celebrated for her style, humanity and independence,” the Grevin Museum said in a statement.
“The gown became a statement of reclaimed self-assertion, a powerful image of determined femininity and renewed confidence,” it added.
Her waxwork is displayed among entertainment and fashion figures, far from King Charles and Queen Elizabeth, who are in a gallery for heads of state.
“The gown became a statement of reclaimed self-assertion, a powerful image of determined femininity and renewed confidence”
The decision to feature the famous “revenge dress” is a bold choice that focuses attention on a hugely damaging episode for the British royal family.
“From Charles’s point of view and Buckingham Palace, they wouldn’t be delighted about this entry at Grevin,” Bertrand Deckers, a royal expert who appears regularly on French television, told AFP.
‘Wronged and wounded’
“They’d clearly prefer that we forgot about all this and never spoke of it,” he added.
But Diana’s image as a “wronged and wounded woman” had helped cement her enduring popularity, he said.
The date chosen for the unveiling – November 20 – was another “sly reference”, the museum said in its statement.
It is the 30th anniversary of a bombshell and still hugely controversial interview Diana gave to the BBC in which she said “there were three of us in this marriage, so it was a little bit crowded”.
That was a reference to Charles’s mistress Camilla Parker Bowles, whom he has since married.
Diana also admitted to her own affair, with James Hewitt, but the interview led the BBC to apologise in 2021 over the “deceptive” way in which it had been secured.
The high-pressure waxwork commission – which will be highly scrutinised by defenders of Diana’s memory – was handed to Paris-based sculptor Laurent Mallamaci.
The Grevin Museum had been in contact with Diana at the end of her life but abandoned the idea of making a figure of her after her death, a spokesperson said.
Deckers, whose recent book is about Princess Catherine, said French people remained fascinated by the British royals despite having famously beheaded their own monarch after the 1789 Revolution.
“It’s almost as if they consider the Windsors as their royal family, even though it would have been more logical to adopt the Grimaldis in Monaco,” Deckers, who is Belgian, said.
