FEELING SHEEPISH: Princess Diana’s red, white and black sheep sweater is going under the Sotheby’s hammer in September, and if that was not enough to make royal watchers swoon, there’s more memorabilia to come.
On Wednesday, Sotheby’s and others involved with the sale confirmed that two letters from Buckingham Palace will be auctioned together with the jacquard jumper, as they call the knit in Britain.
One letter details the repairs Diana requested after she accidentally damaged the “much loved” knit, which was made by the company Warm & Wonderful. The other one is a thank you note.
According to the first letter, Diana requested either a repair or replacement, which the Warm & Wonderful founders, Sally Muir and Joanna Osborn, failed to deliver.
Instead, they knitted the soon-to-be-princess a whole new sweater, prompting a thank you letter from Diana’s then private secretary, Oliver Everett.
On Wednesday, Muir and Osborn revisited the episode, which took place in 1981.
“When we heard from the palace, we were so mortified that the cuff had come off her jumper that we kept it secret, and stashed the letters away in a file,” the designers said.
“Almost nobody spotted that the second time she wore the sweater it was, in fact, a different jumper. That is, until eagle-eyed Jack Carlson, our partner in reviving the brand, asked us about it, and we had to come clean. He is a trained archaeologist, so forensic in detail, and had noticed it was slightly different,” they added.
The original black sheep sweater that Princess Diana, then Lady Di, wore to watch her fiancé Prince Charles play polo in June, 1981.
Carlson is the creative director of Rowing Blazers, which began reviving the Warm & Wonderful designs in 2019 after the company ceased to operate in the mid-’90s. A cotton edition of the sheep sweater is available on Rowing Blazers’ website.
Carlson spotted the differences between Diana’s sweaters not only because of his archeological training, but also because he was aware that in the early days of Warm & Wonderful, no two sweaters were the same.
“They were made all over Britain on hand-operated machines that people had in their homes. It was a true cottage industry, in the original sense of the term, so each sweater was a little different,” Carlson told WWD.
“I realized very early on that Diana must have had at least two different Warm & Wonderful sweaters because, if you study the photographs, you can see several differences. I asked Joanna and Sally about this in one of our first meetings, and to my delight, they told me I was the first person to notice it,” he added.
There is also a Warm & Wonderful sheep sweater with a similar sheep design in the permanent collection of London’s Victoria and Albert Museum.
Actor Emma Corrin wore another replica, also created by Warm & Wonderful, in season four of “The Crown,” adding to the sweater’s mystique.
Carlson argues the sweater’s popularity was already blowing up before the Netflix show aired. “Diana and her style are part of the zeitgeist and the sweater has been on many people’s mood boards for years. But Joanna and Sally are the original designers, and people value that authenticity.”
The newly engaged Lady Diana was first snapped wearing the sweater to watch her fiancé Prince Charles play in a polo match in June 1981. That same sweater will be auctioned by Sotheby’s in New York as part of the house’s inaugural Fashion Icons sale.
Muir and Osborne said they discovered the sweater earlier this year by accident.
“This past March, as we were rummaging through the attic searching for an old pattern, we spotted a small box,” they said last month when the sale was announced.
“Inside, tucked away beside a cotton bedspread was Diana’s original red sheep sweater from 1981. Now, almost four decades later, this one-of-a-kind sheep sweater is ready to make its way into the hands of a fortunate collector,” the designers added.
Online bidding will be open from Aug. 31 through Sept. 13 and the sweater will be displayed in New York starting Sept. 7. It is being offered with an estimate of $50,000 to $80,000.