And so, once again, to Princess Diana. Like Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, she has become a sort of cultural Rosetta Stone we return to over and over, seeking to discover answers to our own choices in her limpid blue stare and cacophonous, attention-grabbing wardrobe.

This time around the re-examination comes courtesy of “The Crown,” Season 4, a.k.a. the Diana Season. The scrutiny has been building since the 20th anniversary of the princess’s death in 2017, when Virgil Abloh declared Diana his Off-White muse and Kensington Palace held an exhibition devoted to her outfits. And though it got a boost last year with a new musical (with costumes by William Ivey Long and a featured song titled “The Dress”) that was supposed to be headed to Broadway, the chatter reached a fresh apogee this weekend with the release of the Netflix show.

The one where the princess, in the form of the actress Emma Corrin, catches the Windsor eye, makes her public debut, gets married and miserable, develops an eating disorder and becomes a Fashion Icon nonetheless.

The one that inspired British Vogue to put Ms. Corrin on the cover of its October issue in a sapphire blue Oscar de la Renta taffeta ball gown with the headline “Queen of Hearts.” The one that has been the subject of a 3-D virtual show at the Brooklyn Museum, “The Queen and the Crown,” featuring assorted items from the series’s costume department, including a raspberry floral two-piece dress made for the princess’s Australian tour and the remake of that famous merengue of an overblown wedding dress.

Source: New York Times

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