Diana (32 page)

“I don’t want [fame]. If it doesn’t stop I’m going to leave the country. I’ll take the product elsewhere.”

Her stock response in confronting the paparrazi in the last years was: “Why don’t you go and rape someone else?”

“The press is ferocious,” she said to
Le Monde
during her final interview. “It pardons nothing. It looks only for mistakes. Every intention is twisted, every gesture criticized. I think things are different abroad. I’m greeted with kindness. I’m accepted as I am, without prejudices, without watching for every faux pas. In Britain it’s the other way round. And I think that in my place, any sane person would have left long ago. But I can’t. I have my sons to think about.”

Did she spend a lot of time thinking about clothes? “No…. Just first thing in the morning when I decide what I’m going to wear that day.”

On choosing her outfits: “You’d be amazed what one has to worry about, from the obvious things like the wind—because there is always a gale wherever we go and the wind is my enemy, there’s no doubt about that.”

To a group of journalists on the clothes she wore: “Clothes are for the job. They’ve got to be practical. Sometimes I can be a little outrageous, which is nice, but only sometimes.”

“My clothes are not my priority. I enjoy bright colors, and my husband likes to see me look smart, presentable, but fashion isn’t my big thing at all.”

She once recalled the clothes she wore during the early days of her public life: “It’s like getting dressed to go to a wedding every day, and when you see yourself photographed in black and white, all the little mistakes show.”

Diana’s choice to wear a stunning strapless dress the evening she was to meet Princess Grace of Monaco caused a considerable stir. “I don’t know why everyone is making such a fuss,” she said to Charles’s valet. “It’s the sort of dress I would have worn anyway.”

“When I wear a backless dress, I find that most people just don’t know where to put their hands.”

After a particularly short haircut, journalist Arthur Edwards remarked that if she kept it up she’d end up looking like pop star Sinead O’Connor. Glancing at his bald pate, she quipped, “At least I’ve got some hair, Arthur.”

“I don’t mind if [the jewelry I wear] is fake or real, it makes no difference to me.”

“[Tiaras] either give me a terrible headache or they fall down over my forehead, pushing my hair into my eyes. I hate wearing them.”