Dresses

"I soon developed a sense of how many different things the Princess had to be: a mother, a member of the royal family, the future Queen of England, an ambassador, an icon. She had all these roles to play, and, when asked, I as a designer was faced with the job of creating designs that would both reflect and enhance all those roles ... My dream from the beginning had been to deal with Diana as a real person - to me it was as important as the designing" - Catherine Walker, Diana fashion & style

A beautiful image of Diana wearing a periwinkle blue off the shoulder silk dress A special exhibition of ten dresses that belonged to Diana, Princess of Wales will be on display at the Bath & North East Somerset Council run Fashion Museum at the Assembly Rooms from 17th July 2010 to 9th January 2011. Some of the exhibits include dresses worn during Royal tours of Canada and New Zealand in the early 1980s, evening dresses by couturier Catherine Walker from 1990, and little black cocktail dresses by designers such as Versace, from the mid 1990s.

One of the dresses on display in the exhibition is the copy of an 1880s dress which Diana wore for a turn-the-clock-back formal Klondike Party at Ford Edmonton, Alberta during the State visit to Canada in 1983. The princess-line dress in the palest pink silk has a swathed skirt detail and was designed for Diana by historic costumier John Bright of Cosprop. Diana wearing the Klondike dress, described above

"I wasn't mad on one sleeve dresses but she loved them and, by then, I'd learned that she couldn't be convinced on certain things, so I popped a beaded white one sleeve Hachi dress on the rail and trotted over to Kensington Palace. Sure enough she made a beeline for it, and when I saw the newspaper pictures of her wearing it, I realized her instincts had been right." - Anna Harvey, Diana fashion & style

The dress that made the highest bid in the Auction, held at Christies in New York, June 1997

The exhibition also includes a group of dresses designed by Catherine Walker, the French born British couturier who supplied many of Diana's formal evening dresses in the late 1980s and early 1990s, including an ice-blue pleated chiffon dress with exquisite sequin embroidery.

The exhibition opens at the Fashion Museum on Saturday 17 July 2010 and continues until 09 January 2011. The Museum is open daily 10.30-5pm, exit 6pm. For more information visit the website http://www.fashionmsueum.co.uk