Last Wednesday, July 10, Queen Camilla was at the All England Club to witness another day of the Wimbledon tournament, a competition that ended on Sunday with victory for the Spaniard Carlos Alcaraz.

On the day, Camilla wore a giraffe-embroidered Anna Valentine dress, an elegant piece she wore on her visit to Kenya in November last year, but which was overshadowed by her choice of accessories: namely, the handbag. The Queen accessorised her look with a classic handbag: the Lady Dior. Initially known as the Chouchou bag, Dior renamed it in 1996 in honour of Princess Diana (‘Lady Di’, as she was known), so for the past almost 30 years the bag has become associated with the image of the late princess.

The fact that the piece is associated with the ex-wife of her current husband, King Charles III, does not seem to bother the Queen, who again used the same bag during a visit to the Welsh Parliament on Thursday.

In Cardiff on July 11, this handbag model was again the favourite © Getty Images

Why was the wallet named after Diana?

We have to go back to 1995, when Bernadette Chirac, wife of former French President Jacques Chirac, offered the bag to the former Princess of Wales, at a time when that model had not yet been launched by Dior.

Diana first wore the piece created by Gianfranco Ferré to attend an exhibition of the painter Paul Cézanne at the Grand Palais in Paris. Months later, the princess was seen getting off a plane in Buenos Aires, Argentina, with the same wallet. It was then that the brand decided to change the name of the model and call it ‘Lady Dior’.

In 1996, Dior created a custom bag for the princess to wear at that year’s Met Gala, which she paired with a silk dress designed by John Galliano. The piece was made from dark blue satin, and in 2022 the brand replicated the model, making a limited edition of 200 pieces.

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