Princess Diana’s Former Trainer Shares the Sad Truth Behind Why She Repeated Outfits
As a single picture fetched thousands at the time, Diana found an ingenious idea to deal with intrusive paparazzi.
Princess Diana was dubbed the world's most photographed lady. As a single picture fetched thousands at the time, Diana found an ingenious idea to deal with intrusive paparazzi. According to Jenni Rivett, Diana’s former trainer, the Princess deliberately repeated her outfits to reduce the market value of images and, consequently, the media frenzy that followed her everywhere.
As reported by She Knows, Rivett said, “I remember one of her strategies was that she was going to wear the same Virgin sweatshirt every single session.” Diana, who shared a close bond with Rivett, allegedly often confided in her about the relentless media pressure she faced. The paparazzi hounded her at every turn. At her funeral, her brother, Earl Spencer, famously called her the most hunted woman in the modern world. When Diana's marriage unraveled, even the blurriest image of her fetched up to $667,000, as reported by Tatler.
The media obsession persisted even after she left the royal fold in 1993. Instead, it just got worse. As reported by HuffPost, paparazzo Mark Saunders once admitted, “We did everything. I mean, it’s hard to believe now what went on. We would hide in the bushes, we would hide up trees, hide behind cars. The pictures were being taken daily, and it was snowballing and it was just getting bigger and bigger and going on and on and on.”
Diana's boys, Prince William and Prince Harry, found the relentless media scrutiny deeply upsetting. Both brothers still carry the weight of those memories. In the HBO documentary Diana, Our Mother: Her Life and Legacy, William said, “I sadly remember most of the time she ever cried about anything was to do with press intrusion. Harry and I had to live through that.” Harry, for his part, raged at the paparazzi for chasing his mother into the Paris tunnel. He called them out for just watching, not helping, as Diana lay in the wreckage.
In a BBC documentary, he said, "I think one of the hardest things to come to terms with is the fact that the people that chased her into the tunnel were the same people that were taking photographs of her while she was still dying on the back seat of the car." He added, "She had quite a severe head injury, but she was very much still alive in the back seat, and those people that caused the accident, instead of helping, they were taking photographs...and then those photographs made their way back to news desks." Years later, as Harry watched his own wife, Meghan Markle, get slandered in the press, he filed several lawsuits against press outlets and moved his family to the US.
