Princess Diana may have been known as the People’s Princess, but her style was famously high-class. From Versace to Dior and Ferragamo, the Sandringham-born Royal counted some of the world’s most iconic designers among her favourites.
But in the final years of her life, there was one luxury label that Diana avoided: Chanel.
The French fashion house’s designs were a staple of the mother-of-two’s looks throughout the 1980s; its bags and shoes, in particular.
But in the mid 1990s, that changed. Around the same time Prince Charles publicly confessed to having an affair during a television interview, Diana stopped wearing the label’s accessories altogether. A decision, it would seem, that was entirely deliberate.
Diana, Chanel and the interlocking Cs.
It's understood Chanel's twin Cs logo was painfully significant to Diana, as it represented the relationship between her husband and his long-standing mistress Camilla Parker-Bowles.
In her 1992 autobiography, Diana: Her True Story, which was published in the midst of her marriage breakdown, the Princess told of spotting a set of Chanel cufflinks on her husband's wrists during their 1981 honeymoon.
"Two 'C's entwined like the Chanel 'C's. Got it in one; knew exactly," the book read. "[I said] 'Camilla gave you those, didn't she?' He said: 'Yes, so what's wrong? They're a present from a friend.'
"And boy did we have a row. Jealousy, total jealousy - and it's such a good idea the two 'C's but it wasn't that clever in some ways."
Australian fashion designer Jayson Brundson, witnessed Diana's aversion to the label first-hand shortly after her July 1996 divorce.
In an interview with Harper’s Bazaar earlier this year, Brundson recounted a conversation he had with the newly single Diana during her last visit to Australia later that year.
Brundson was assisting decorated hairdresser Joh Bailey, who had been employed to style the former Princess of Wales' locks during the visit. When she asked Bailey for advice on what to wear with her cream Versace skirt suit that day, he deferred to Brundson.
"She went back to her bedroom and she came out holding, like, handfuls of shoes and bags and just dumped them all down on the couch. Then said, 'What do you think?'," the designer told the publication.
"So I went through them all and I found a pair of Chanel shoes, and I said, 'Well these would look great with the Versace,' and she said 'No, I can't wear linked Cs, the double C.'
"So I asked why, and she said, 'It's Camilla and Charles.'"
Charles and Camilla married in 2005, eight years after Diana's death.