Diana wore knicker elastic in hair
PRINCESS Diana sat through state occasions and formal dinners with knicker elastic holding her tiara in place.Richard Dalton, her closest confidante and hairdresser for ten years, came up with the trick after Diana complained her tiara was uncomfortable, heavy and hard to keep on.
In the final part of his first-ever interview Richard said: “Any pictures you see of Diana looking forlorn or grimacing slightly while wearing a tiara are because she was in pain.
“She told me, ‘Richard, you have got to do something about this.’ So I had velvet sewn into it to cushion her head and used knicker elastic from one side to the other so she could keep the damn thing firmly on.
“We would pull her hair over the top and blend it in and we never looked back.
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| Close … Di chats with Richard during 1985 trip to Australia |
“The Spencer tiara is also very noisy. It rattles from all the pearls so it drove her a little mad, on top of the weight of it.”
Richard added: “Seeing her haircuts and styles being imitated around the world was an extraordinary feeling. It’s a hairdresser’s dream.
“It’s like being a hair stylist for a magazine shoot and seeing your creation on the cover, except with Diana your hairdo was on the cover of every other magazine on the news-stand, not just one. That was amazing.
“The time we went to Japan was hysterical because the streets were lined with hundreds of Japanese wearing blonde wigs shaped in a Di style.
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| Popular … Diana in Munich |
“Charles didn’t quite get it but Diana and I thought it was hysterically funny.” The crimper, who is credited with making the princess an icon for millions of women, has two favourite styles he created for Diana.
The first was when she went to the opera in Munich and he recalled: “Her hair was flawless and she looked so beautiful.
“My other favourite was a night in Bangkok with orchids in her hair. She was wearing a purple one-shoulder dress — it was stunning. I had to run down the stairs to watch her come out of the elevator.”
One of Diana’s hairstyles — at the State Opening of Parliament in 1984 — caused a huge furore which left her mother-in-law the Queen distinctly unamused.
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| Favourite … Diana in Bangkok |
Scots bachelor Richard had created a chignon for Diana — a swept-behind-the-head bun — which grabbed all the headlines the following day.
He recalled: “There was a big hoo-ha afterwards. Diana was horrified when the hairdo eclipsed the Queen and it completely altered the way we approached changing her length and styles.
“After that if we wanted to change the cut of her hair — say she wanted it shorter — we would cut it a tiny bit every other day for two months so that by the time she wanted it to be short it had completely slipped under the radar and nobody noticed the difference.”
Richard reckons Diana only ever had one spectacular failure with her hair.
He said: “I think the only mistake she ever made was to slick it back — and you’ll notice she never did that again. There is a picture that Terence Donovan took of her with slicked-back hair which we did at a photo sitting with him.
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| Ceremony … Diana at the State Opening of Parliament |
“We were just messing about in the studio and I gelled her hair completely back and we put a tiara on top. Diana gave me a couple of prints from that shoot and I have them on my wall at home.”
He added: “Her favourite place to get her hair done was at my house in Kensington. We’d wash her hair at the kitchen sink, then go upstairs and blow-dry it.
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| Tress code … Diana in the Spencer tiara |
“My room upstairs had pictures of her and the boys on the walls and she’d say, ‘I hate coming in this room because there are pictures of me everywhere.’
“I also cut William and Harry’s hair. I would often go up to the nursery to say hello to the boys when they were home.
“As soon as they’d see me they would rush to put a chair on the coffee table because that is where I cut their hair.
“They’d also go to put the TV on because they were allowed to watch it when I was cutting their hair. They would be so disappointed if they found out I was just there to say hello because it meant no telly.”
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| Amused … Di during Tokyo visit |
Richard added: “Travelling was a whole other story and we did her hair in some of the most unusual places, like the toilet of an Air New Zealand jumbo jet.
“We always permed her hair which was why we were able to achieve the looks we did, but Diana was not much of a hair-hopper.
“We tried it long and it would be a little bit of a mess and when I put it up it generated far too much press. In the end, short hair just suited her best.
“My mentor was Alexander of Paris. He was Princess Grace’s hairdresser and I have always modelled my career on his.
“That Princess Diana died in a crash in the same way Alexander lost his princess, it was scary. I was sick to my stomach.
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“I know Diana confided a lot in Princess Grace at first. The parallels with what they both went through meant Grace was able to give the Princess a lot of support.
“The first time I did the Princess’s hair for a solo occasion was for Grace’s funeral. She was devastated. When she went to the Cannes Film Festival we chose the ice-blue Catherine Walker dress and had Catherine make a long scarf to go with it as a direct tribute to Princess Grace.
“I have photographs of Diana all over my house and sometimes I think, ‘My God, this is just a tragedy and I wish it never happened but I can’t bring her back.’”
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