Diana’s initial reaction to the look was “Oh God, I’m not sure I would get away with this,” her hairstylist Sam McKnight recalled.
Hairstylist Sam McKnight was responsible for some of Princess Diana’s most iconic looks—and shared that, for one of them, he and the Princess of Wales turned to a supermodel as a muse.
Speaking on a recent episode of the “Fat Mascara” podcast, McKnight spoke about a photoshoot Diana had with photographer Patrick Demarchelier, featured by Harper’s Bazaar just after the Princess of Wales’s tragic death in a Paris car accident in 1997.
“We did her hair slicked back quite a lot with Patrick, but she kind of felt that it was drawing too much attention to her,” McKnight said (per Marie Claire).
Diana had a pixie-like cut at the time, which McKnight famously gelled for a slick effect. Diana, per Marie Claire, was happy to wear that hairstyle for artistic photoshoots, but not so much for royal events because “to have such a huge change, it would detract from the charity she was promoting,” McKnight explained on the podcast.
On the cover of Harper’s Bazaar, Diana wore a studded Versace gown—and the iconic look was thanks to Christy Turlington, McKnight said. “I was working with Christy Turlington,” he said. “She was in this pale blue studded Versace gown and said, ‘My God, Princess Diana would look amazing in this. Why don’t you give her this Polaroid?’ Which I did.”
Diana said, “Oh God, I’m not sure I would get away with this,” McKnight recalled. But, after getting a nod of approval and encouragement from Turlington, Diana dared to go for it. “I think that was the first time she wore Versace,” McKnight said of the brand that would come to define Diana’s later years. “Those pictures are some of my favorites.”
McKnight worked with Diana from 1990 until her death at age 36 in 1997, which he called “a defining moment for me” (per The Telegraph). He is responsible for her “wet look” hairstyle and cutting her hair shorter. “It took us a couple of years to get there with her, but we got there in the end,” he told British Vogue.
McKnight told the outlet that he initially didn’t realize that his work with Diana would be referenced for years to come, “but a bit of time into working with her, yes,” he said. He told Today that Diana had the ability to make “us all feel totally at ease. She had an amazing way of disarming you and kind of getting rid of all the nerves, and laughing and making jokes.”
Yet, lighthearted though she could be, McKnight also observed “how serious she took her role,” he added. “She knew the power that she had.”
McKnight was there for a turbulent period in Diana’s life—he was working with her through her 1992 separation from Prince Charles through their 1996 divorce and beyond. McKnight, though, would never share what she told him about her personal life during those years. “That would be betraying the trust of a good friend,” he said. “I would never do that. It’s a very close relationship always between a woman and a hairdresser.”
Her death was even more tragic because she was “really coming into her own,” McKnight said. “She had developed this style of her own that was stripped of all the sort of artifice of the ‘80s. She was just becoming this amazing, confident, modern woman.”
