It turns out that Princess Diana was ahead of her time when it came to her shoes. We don’t mean the ballet flats by French Sole she wore with her more casual outfits, nor her two-tone shoes. Back in the ’80s and ’90s, the Princess of Wales was sporting what has become one of the most popular trends of summer 2023: silver shoes.
You could say the metallic shoe was Diana’s secret weapon when it came to footwear. Although she underwent a radical style evolution following her divorce from King Charles III, then the Prince of Wales, in 1996, this shoe continued to underpin her ensembles. In her early days, Shy Di – as she was nicknamed by the press – opted for closed pumps with a sensible heel that she wore to countless events. On the Prince and Princess’s royal tour of Australia in 1983, Diana packed a rainbow’s worth of colourful dresses and proved that silver shoes go with everything.
The royal was also a very early adopter of Balletcore, at one point wearing a romantic dress in soft pink with a sequined skirt, plus (you guessed it) silver shoes and a matching handbag. (Matching her purse to her shoes was an ’80s styling maxim that Diana continued to live by as her wardrobe evolved.)
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Beyond the classic closed-toe shoe that her daughter-in-law, Kate Middleton, is now busy reviving, Princess Diana was also fond of the sling-back. Jimmy Choo, who met the Princess in the 1990s, confessed that he had lost count of the number of models he had designed for her. Images from 1992 and 1993 reveal that she also opted for a shiny shoe with a pointed toe and a high heel.
Her metallic mood reached a peak with the look that earned her the nickname “Dynasty Di”: the silver pleated Bruce Oldfield dress she wore in 1985 to attend the premiere of the James Bond film A View to a Kill. She, of course, wore silver heels.
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