Little Dresses, A Princess Diana Collection
To say there has been a lot going on in the world of The
Princess and the Platypus Foundation would be an understatement!
We plan to catch you up with all of the exciting details in
forthcoming posts, until then we wanted to show you a delightful “sneak
peek” of our miniature Diana dress collection, truly incredible! It’s a
one-of-a-kind collection of all 79 Christie’s Dresses … in miniature. These
dresses will be part of our Princess Diana 3D Virtual Museum, where you can
take an up close and personal look at them, all with their own unique design
features.
These “Little
Dresses” are perfect copies of the original dresses auctioned by
Christie’s in June 1997 — just two months before Princess Diana’s death.
They’re all of uniform size and fit the 15 1/2″ Franklin Mint vinyl
Princess Diana doll.
The dresses were collected over a ten
year period from 1997 – 2007. Some of the dresses were wonderfully made
by various doll companies — notably, the Franklin Mint and the Great American Doll Company .However,
the vast majority of the dresses were masterfully hand-made in
exquisite, remarkable detail by private label dress makers. Some of the
dresses were extremely difficult to create; for example, the Lot 43
“Hook” dress (floor-length, black and white gown with tightly swirled
ribbon inter-spaced with pearls) took a master dressmaker several
attempts … and finally two months to craft!
Fun fact: The dresses were made by 14 different dressmakers on
four continents.
Dressmakers from the USA, Canada, UK, France, Netherlands,
China, Japan, and Hong-Kong all contributed their amazing talent to the
enormous task of making all 79 dresses for the 10 year anniversary exhibit in
2007. That exhibit reunited a total of thirty Diana dresses, 26 of them from
the Christie’s auction, a feat which had never been done, nor has ever been
done since.
This exhibit was held October – December
2007 at the Appleton Museum of Art in Ocala, FL. The Little Dresses were
displayed once again in 2010 at the Von Leibig Museum of Art in Naples,
Florida before they were retired.
In addition to being displayed at these two world class,
fully-accredited museums, the collection of “Little Dresses” was
featured in the BBC Canada Television Documentary, “Marketing the
Monarchy” in 2011. It is the only one of its kind in the world.
The “Little Dresses” collection is just
one component of a very large array of Princess Diana items collected
from around the world. You can view the entire collection in our Princess Diana 3D Virtual Museum, launching August 2019.
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