Time to get your royal bidding fingers ready.
Princess Diana fans can own a piece of fashion history when the late royal’s famed black sheep sweater goes up for auction in August, Sotheby’s announced today.
The princess’ playfully patterned Warm & Wonderful sweater will headline the auction house’s first “Fashion Icons” sale this fall — and its discovery was actually a happy accident.
“This past March, as we were rummaging through the attic searching for an old pattern, we spotted a small box,” Warm & Wonderful designers Sally Muir and Joanna Osborne told Sotheby’s in a press release.
”Inside, tucked away beside a cotton bedspread was Diana’s original red sheep sweater from 1981.”
Princess Diana originally wore the bright red crewneck to one of husband Prince Charles’ polo matches in 1981, with Sotheby’s noting that “the media, fashion critics and the public alike carefully dissected the sweater’s black sheep symbolism.”
Indeed, many interpreted the single black sheep on her sweater to indicate her feelings of being an outsider in the royal family.
Diana wore her Warm & Wonderful jumper with jeans and red pumps for its original outing, sporting a white pie-crust-collar blouse underneath.
“After damaging her much-loved sweater, Diana sent it back to the label alongside a request for repair,” Sotheby’s wrote on Instagram Monday. “Instead, an entirely new sweater was knitted and returned to her.”
Diana wore that sweater it another polo match in 1983, joining Sarah Ferguson, the Duchess of York as she styled the knitwear with white trousers and a jaunty tie-neck top underneath.
The original, slightly damaged knit will be the one going up on the auction block, and is sure to attract a hefty bid due to its royal history.
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The sheep sweater remained so popular over the years that a version was relaunched in 2020, with the famous design now offered in a lighter-weight cotton fabric ($248).
If you want the OG sweater to be part of your own collection, better start saving your pennies: Online bidding will be open from August 31 through September 14, and the piece carries an estimate of between $50,000 and $80,000.