Dior Reissues 200 copies of Lady Di's Mythical Bag

This design, closely related to the Princess of Wales, but also to Bernard Arnault and Bernadette Chirac, is reproduced for the first time since 1996. Here are the details.

It is the most royal of Dior bags. While the latest season of the series The Crown offers a place on the screen to the Lady Dior bag, the brand draws from its archives to reissue the famous model worn by Lady Diana at the Met Gala in 1996. Miniature proportions, midnight blue satin and rhinestones: this is a big night out version of her faithful accessory. A bag with emblematic lines whose destiny was sealed at the top of the French state.

Monday, September 25, 1995. The city of Paris rolled out the red carpet for a special guest: Lady Di. The Grand Palais was putting the finishing touches on its Paul Cézanne retrospective, which the Princess of Wales had come especially to see. At the Élysée Palace, Bernadette Chirac is preparing to receive the 34-year-old aristocrat in her salons for tea. Avenue Montaigne is also busy. The president's wife sent Françoise Dumas, head of the Elysee's receptions, to the Dior boutique to fetch the attention that the first lady reserved for Diana. A unique gift, carefully chosen from the LVMH group, patron of the exhibition and flagship of luxury.

Lady Diana's gift was decided a week earlier. To decide, Bernadette Chirac asked Jean-Paul Claverie, Bernard Arnault's advisor and close to the princess, as well as the head of LVMH, himself. Bernard Arnault is leaning towards a Dior bag, still at the prototype stage, provisionally named Chouchou. The model is in development, it should be released in the fall of that year, but can leave the production workshops in a few days. In the ambassadors' lounge at the Élysée Palace on the afternoon of September 25, Bernadette Chirac offered the bag to Lady Diana, in the presence of the Arnault couple. The first lady and the executive were right on target.

Made of leather and of medium size, the model will make its first appearances in the fall of 1995, during Lady Di's travels, from Buenos Aires to Birmingham. The beginning of a love story, sealed by this name, Lady Dior, proposed by the brand the following year and that she accepted with joy. She ordered all the models until her accidental death on August 31, 1997. And will not fail to illustrate herself with her favorite bag, as when she walked the red carpet of the Met Gala 1996, just divorced, in a Dior babydoll dress. Today, reissued in a limited edition of 200 pieces, this iconic mini Lady Dior is 5,000 euros.