Lady Diana’s Evening Gowns to Be Auctioned for Charity

LONDON — You’re invited to the princess of all used clothes sales. Not quite everything must go. Now that she will never be queen, Lady Di is changing her image--and along with it comes a major closet-lightener.

Later this year, 65 evening gowns that graced one of the world’s most photographed women will be auctioned here for charity. British newspapers that broke the news Wednesday believe that the clothes will fetch more than $1.5 million--not in the backyard of her palace but at Christie’s.

Unconfirmed reports say that the 35-year-old princess may also shed the full-skirted silk wedding dress with a 25-foot train that claimed world attention at her marriage to Prince Charles in 1981. That may be donated to the Victoria and Albert Museum in London to join other royal finery on display.

If you’ll be bidding on the evening gowns and need a goal for your diet, think in terms of a size 10, counseled one fashion consultant at a London atelier Wednesday.

Remember, though, that the tall, sinuous Di does not wear pret-a-porter evening wear. Dresses at the sale will have all been made for her, so prospective buyers will have to approximate Diana’s shape or risk ending up with a never-wear.

Early reaction to Diana’s decision was generally positive Wednesday, since money from the sale will go to her favorite charities, including AIDS and cancer research.

“Now clothes aren’t so important for her. I think it’s a big statement she’s making. She doesn’t want to be thought of in those terms. She’s just getting on with her life. I think it’s a brilliant, brilliant statement,” said Elizabeth Emanuel, who with her then-husband David designed Diana’s wedding dress.

At least one royals correspondent, though, cautioned that the sale might further damage the battered image of Britain’s royal family.

Peter Archer shuddered at the thought of a tawdry entrepreneur buying gowns as the centerpiece of something trendy--a sort of Hard Frock Cafe.

Diana and Charles were divorced last year after a long, bitter separation. Since then, she has strived to be accepted more as a working woman--”a queen of hearts,” she once said--and less as a clothes-horse princess.

Many of the gowns that will go to auction date from Diana’s early days in the 1980s as the Princess of Wales, when she favored high-collared blouses, flounces, frills and full skirts. Ultimately, Diana has been seen more in long, sleek, hugging and sometimes revealing evening gowns.

The princess wore no evening dress at all on a recent working visit to Angola, where she visited minefield victims.

On the trip, emphasizing her new career as an international figure of empathy and concern, she wore nothing more elegant than flat shoes, sleeveless blouses and calf-length chinos--by Armani.