In 1985, Princess Diana danced with John Travolta at the White House in a gown by the London designer Victor Edelstein. 34 years later, Historic Royal Palaces bought the dress for £264,000
On the night of November 9, 1985, at a dinner in the White House, John Travolta danced with the Princess of Wales. The photographs of the two of them spinning across the floor went around the world.
So did the dress: a gown by the London couturier Victor Edelstein.
It has been known as the “Travolta dress” since. In December 2019, after it failed to find a buyer at auction, Historic Royal Palaces, the charity that looks after Kensington Palace, bought it for £264,000.
A small dinner with a famous guest list
The evening was smaller than most people picture. According to the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, it was a private dinner for about 80 guests, held during Charles and Diana’s first joint visit to the United States. The Reagans chose most of the names, with a few suggestions from the royal couple. The list included Neil Diamond, Clint Eastwood, Tom Selleck and the astronaut Alan Shepard.
Dinner was served in the State Dining Room. Afterward, the opera singer Leontyne Price performed in the East Room, and the library says the party carried on until past midnight.
The famous moment was arranged. The Reagan Library’s account says Diana told Nancy Reagan there was a guest she wanted to dance with. Travolta, flattered and a little intimidated, said he couldn’t possibly ask her. The First Lady replied: “Oh yes you can.”
They danced for almost 15 minutes, to music from Saturday Night Fever.
Diana wore a velvet gown with a sapphire and pearl choker. Years later, the auctioneer Kerry Taylor told CNN that she counted it among the three defining images of Diana, alongside her wedding dress and the black “revenge dress” of 1994.
Taylor’s explanation was about the moment as much as the fabric. At the time, Charles and Diana still looked like a fairytale marriage, and here was the princess dancing with a Hollywood star in front of the world’s cameras.
From Diana’s wardrobe to the saleroom
The dress left royal hands in 1997. CNN reports that in June that year, two months before she died in a car crash in Paris, Diana gave 79 gowns to Christie’s in New York to be sold for charity. The Edelstein dress drew the highest bid of the night, $222,500.
According to The New York Times, as cited by CNN, that set a new Christie’s record for a garment. The record it broke, $145,000, belonged to the white polyester suit Travolta wore in Saturday Night Fever.
The dress changed hands again in March 2013, at Kerry Taylor Auctions in London, selling for £240,000 to a British buyer who wanted it as a present for his wife, Taylor told CNN.
The 2019 price
In December 2019, the dress went back under the hammer at Taylor’s auction house, with expectations of up to £350,000. Bidding fell short. It was then sold privately, after the auction, to Historic Royal Palaces.
According to a Press Association report, the price including the buyer’s premium came to £264,000. The auction house said the seller was pleased because he had hoped the dress would stay in the UK.
The dress did not go straight on show. New arrivals to the collection are frozen or heat-treated to kill clothes moths, and ITV News reported in May 2020 that the gown had been frozen, thawed slowly and was still sitting in the charity’s “isolation room” when the Covid lockdown began.
When Kensington Palace reopened to visitors on July 30, 2020, the dress was the main attraction. Hello! reported that it was going on public display for the first time since the charity bought it.
Back where it started
Diana gave the dress away to raise money for charity. It then spent more than two decades passing between private buyers on both sides of the Atlantic. It now belongs to a public collection, and when it is shown, it hangs in the palace she lived in.