Fashion

Princess Diana’s sheep sweater sells for record-breaking $1.1M at auction

This sheep doesn’t come cheap.

Princess Diana’s famous black sheep sweater stunned fashion fans Thursday when it sold at auction for an astounding $1.1 million, breaking the record for the highest price ever paid for an item worn by the late royal.

The red Warm & Wonderful piece — which features a flock of white critters surrounded by one black sheep — is one of the most iconic pieces ever worn by Princess Diana, with the patterned sweater surpassing Sotheby’s auction estimate of $50,000-$80,000 by leaps and bounds.

While the lucky winner is currently unknown, the auction house noted in a press release that a 15-minute bidding war ensued, resulting in the price skyrocketing from $190,000 to its selling price of $1,143,000 in rapid speed.

Princess Diana’s iconic black sheep sweater has sold for more than $1 million in a Sotheby’s auction Thursday.
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Diana wore her sweater during a 1983 polo outing with Sarah, the Duchess of York.
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Warm & Wonderful designers Sally Muir and Joanna Osborne pose with their iconic sweater at Sotheby’s.
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The legendary sweater was offered up to Sotheby’s after designers Sally Muir and Joanna Osborne found it in a box while “rummaging through the attic.”

”Inside, tucked away beside a cotton bedspread was Diana’s original red sheep sweater from 1981,” the designers said in a June press release.

Princess Diana first sported the red sweater in 1981, and its inclusion of a black sheep was widely considered a subtle message of the princess feeling like she didn’t belong in the royal family — or perhaps how she wanted to stand out from the rest of the flock as well.

The princess was known for her love of playful knitwear.
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The sweater went on display at Sotheby’s in NYC before it sold for more than a million dollars this week.
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Her sheep sweater was instantly copied by women around the world.
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She wore the knitwear so often that it ended up torn, with Sotheby’s sharing on Instagram in June that “after damaging her much-loved sweater, Diana sent it back to the label alongside a request for repair.”

The auctioned-off sweater found in a box was the original, damaged version, as Muir and Osborne made a new sweater for the princess instead of returning hers.

The sheep sweater’s impressive sale follows a range of other auctions featuring items worn by the late Princess of Wales, with a purple velvet evening gown that brought in a whopping $604,800 in January holding the previous record.

The letters regarding Diana’s damaged sweater were put on display at Sotheby’s in London this summer.
Getty Images for Sotheby’s

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One piece was even purchased by none other than Kim Kardashian, with the reality star nabbing Diana’s amethyst cross necklace for a comparative bargain price of $197,453 earlier this year.

If you haven’t got a royal-sized budget, you can always grab your very own sheep sweater ($248) from Warm & Wonderful, which relaunched the legendary design in 2020.

As for Diana’s second sweater, perhaps that will eventually hit the auction block, too.