Wanna Buy Princess Diana's Used, Paparazzi-Thwarting Gym Clothes?

Wanna buy a lightly used vintage sweatshirt? You could probably snag one at Goodwill for cheap—or you could shell out several thousand dollars for one with the Virgin Atlantic logo, which was personally gifted to Princess Diana by founder and all-around media personality Richard Branson. It’s too small for me, so you can have it if you want it.

It’s being sold by Diana’s personal trainer and friend, to whom she gave the shirt along with some interesting backstory, Harper’s Bazaar reported. The listing at RR Auctions explains that she wore it in the mid 1990s as a way to thwart the photographers who followed her day and night, at the height of the
media frenzy:

The recipient of the sweatshirt, Jenni Rivett, served as the personal trainer to Princess Diana for over seven years. In a 2018 interview with the Yahoo! series The Royal Box, Rivett recounted Diana’s decision to simplify her workout outfits: ‘Every single session all the media were outside camped with their stepladders, and cameras and lenses and everything. For her she just found it so incredibly, ‘why are they so interested in me when there is more important things to worry about in the world.’ It wasn’t her that asked for all this. I remember one of her strategies was that she was going to wear the same Virgin Active sweatshirt every single session.’

It was a clever move by a woman who’d spent her entire adult life dealing with immense media interest—wearing the same shirt, especially a nondescript one, over and over again would prevent photographers from getting an interesting new photo to sell. But of course, in the end, nothing put a damper on them except Diana’s death.

The online auction ends July 10 so if you want it, you’d better get a move on.