Why Are We Still So Fascinated by Princess Diana’s Swimsuits?

In The Crown season six, episode one, Princess Diana stands in a tender while on vacation in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, striking a deal with the paparazzi. She’ll give them a front page-worthy photograph, she promises—but only if they leave her young family alone afterwards.

A handshake agreement is made, although Diana surely knows it will soon be broken. Still, she stands up, throws her arms back, and pouts, showing off her figure in an animal print one-piece bathing suit as the photographers begin snapping away in a frenzy.

It’s a scene that closely mirrors reality. They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but that picture of Diana was worth all that and far, far more: tabloids offered £500,000 ($635,000) for unsuspecting shots of the princess, earning her the nickname of “The Princess of Sales.” After a photograph of her kissing Dodi Fayed went for £1.7 million ($2.15 million), it’s reported that over 2,000 paparazzi headed to the Mediterranean—a gossip rag gold rush.

The Crown costume designer Sidonie Roberts studied these archival photos when creating Elizabeth Debicki’s vacation outfits for the show. “Our inspiration boards were made up of all the holiday photos we could get our hands on,” she tells Vogue. Many of those featured a distinctive animal-print swimsuit, originally designed specifically for Diana by Leah Gottlieb of Gottex.

Since then, the Israeli swim brand has made a similar suit for sale, called the “Diana.” It’s this very one that Debicki wears on The Crown in that pivotal (and prescient) scene. Roberts explains the costume choice went beyond a desire for historical accuracy. “Here, in animal print—like on safari—Diana is literally hunted by the press,” she says. “She orchestrates this moment as a bargaining tool: If she gives them this headline moment, would they give her and her boys peace? So the outfit and glasses had to be front page worthy.”

The choice of a pair of Versace lenses to accompany the swimsuit was equally intentional. “The goddess Medusa used as their logo symbolizes power and beauty, so there are all these subtle meanings behind how we think Diana used fashion both consciously and subconsciously in her life,” she says.

It’s another swimsuit, however, that The Crown decided to put front and center in their promotional materials: a turquoise one-piece worn by Debicki on a diving board. Like the animal print, it mimics a real piece worn by the Princess of Wales. On August 24, 1997, paparazzi captured Princess Diana sitting alone on the diving board upon Mohamed Al Fayed’s private yacht “Jonikal” off the coast of Portofino. 

What was originally billed as a sensational snap of the Princess jaunting off on a glamorous vacation with her new boyfriend took a tragic turn: a week later, she died in Paris after her car crashed in a tunnel while being chased by aggressive photographers. Today, it symbolizes something almost as harrowing: even when far out at sea, she could be tracked down by a camera lens—and, therefore, never alone.

After all, it was the very invasiveness of the bathing suit photos of Princess Diana that made them so sought after. To the general public, the title of princess comes with expectations of conservative dress and decorum—and the scant coverage of wearing a swimsuit turns that paradigm upside down. The next generation of royal women was objectified in similar ways: in 2013, an Italian tabloid ran pictures of Kate Middleton in a bikini while on vacation in Mustique against her wishes. “We are disappointed that photographs of the Duke and Duchess on a private holiday look likely to be published overseas,” a spokesman for the couple told People at the time. “This is a clear breach of the couple’s right to privacy.”

Yet, despite the harrowing undertones, the undeniable glamour of Diana in these images still influences (and perhaps haunts) our subconscious. According to Google, searches for “one-piece swimsuit” jumped 176% worldwide and 333% in the U.S. in the weeks following The Crown. Meanwhile, “blue swimsuit” searches skyrocketed 158% worldwide and 846% in the U.S.–an almost tenfold increase in typical search interest. Even after all this time, the world can never get enough of Diana.