Princess Diana Loved This U.S. Bargain Department Store

Hold on—are we seriously telling you that the world’s biggest fashion icon, who had designers dying to dress her, also shopped at a discount department store? Yep, that’s exactly what we’re saying! Princess Diana might have had her pick of designer clothes and a wardrobe the rest of us could only dream about, but a new book reveals that she also loved a bargain, just like the rest of us.

Well, almost just like the rest of us. According to Edward White in Dianaworld: An Obsession, the Princess of Wales hopped across the pond to America to shop at this big-name store. And it ended up igniting a love for the USA that lasted the rest of her life.

So which discount department store caught Diana’s eye—and tempted her wallet? Read on for the big reveal, as well as why she became so fascinated by America after her divorce.

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Was Princess Diana a known bargain shopper?

Not exactly, but Diana did love mixing high-end and casual items. It became one of her signature style moves, beyond the designer gowns and jewels she dazzled in at formal events. In her everyday life, she’d pair a blazer with a baseball cap and jeans, sneakers or cowboy boots, or wear a sweatshirt emblazoned with the name of one of her charities. And she was often snapped in workout clothes—bicycle shorts, an oversized sweatshirt and sneakers.

She also secretly adored costume jewelry, which many onlookers thought was the real thing. She would take herself shopping to Butler & Wilson in London’s Fulham Road, where she bought the $30 pearl earrings she wore in Saudi Arabia in 1986, as well as a large snake brooch that she paired with a Jasper Conran trouser suit that same year.

Even Prince Charles got in on the action. When he visited Marshall Field’s department store in Chicago, he bought Diana a $64 Maltese Cross brooch by Butler & Wilson. She wore it in London in 1986, on her infamous Murray Arbeid flamenco dress, which she accessorized with one black and one red evening glove.

Which affordable U.S. department store did she love?

Princess Diana of Wales and Prince Charles of Wales (together C) and guests attend an event at a JCPenney department store in Springfield, Virginia — WWD/Getty Images

It turns out, Diana was a big fan of JCPenney! It all started in November 1985, when Diana visited a JCPenney store with Prince Charles, in Springfield, Virginia. The couple was touring Washington, D.C. and visited the store, which was holding a British promotion. Diana couldn’t resist purchasing a red scarf, and after the couple left, onlookers bought the entire stock of them, right there and then.

In his book, White pinpoints that moment as the beginning of Diana’s love with Americana. The princess “embraced the same philosophy of consumption that made America great,” he says, “to the extent that when she was in the United States, Diana shopped at JCPenney.”

Why did she love shopping there?

Because so many Americans did! Back in the 1980s, shopping was high on the list of any visitor’s itinerary to the U.S., and Diana was no exception. Before online shopping, many brands were available only in the United States, and to get them, you had to travel here. So wandering around JCPenney would have been as fun for the 24-year-old as any of us.

Diana apparently found the entire experience exciting, and it sparked a deep love for the States. Four years later, she undertook her first solo tour of New York, which was a huge success. Diana mania was everywhere. She returned to New York in 1996, when she attended the Met Gala, and in 1997, shortly before her death, she was back in New York, auctioning off her designer gowns at Christie’s, during which she raised more than $3.2 million for AIDS and cancer charities.

What other American clothing did she like wearing?

Diana’s wardrobe began to reflect her love for America. When she first married Charles and became a princess, she made sure to wear British designers, such as Emanuel and Catherine Walker. But as her marriage failed, as well as after the split in 1992, Diana had more freedom in both her wardrobe and her life.

At that point, she went all-in. “One of the reasons Diana is perceived to have launched a sartorial rebellion against the House of Windsor is her wardrobe of clothing that marked her out as an Americanophile: cowboy boots, NFL sweatshirts, baseball caps, T-shirts and jackets with the stars and stripes on them,” says White.

Some of her more memorable looks? A green-and-white Philadelphia Eagles Varsity jacket—a gift from statistician Jack Edelstein, whom she met at Grace Kelly’s funeral—and a stars and stripes sweatshirt paired ith her trademark bicycle shorts. In the ’90s, she also loved Harvard and Northwestern college sweatshirts, and a Ralph Lauren USA jersey.

Why was Diana on such an American kick?

While Diana had struggled with the restrictions she felt inside the Palace walls, she was free to be herself in America. And as it turned out, Americans loved her too.

Before her death, she was even planning to move to the U.S., according to her former butler Paul Burrell. “Diana was also deciding to spend some of her time in America,” he said on the U.K. TV show Loose Women in 2019. “In fact, the day she died, on her desk were plans of a home in Malibu in California, which she was in the process of purchasing. She was going to take William and Harry for three, four weeks every year to America to give them a different culture, to give them a different insight into life.”

Her brother, Earl Spencer, seems to back up this assertion. “There is no doubt that she was looking for a new direction in her life at this time,” he said at her funeral. “She talked endlessly of getting away from England.”

And while she would never make the move, her son Prince Harry did. He described it as the “life my mum wanted [for me],” at the New York Times Dealbook Summit in 2024. “I think when you are kind of trapped within this bubble, it feels like there’s no way out.”

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Sources:

Dianaworld: An Obsession by Edward White
Diana: Her True Story: In Her Own Words by Andrew Morton
Butler & Wilson: “Costume Jewellery – The rise of social media”
Daily Mail: “A novel way to wear emeralds, rubies to woo a Prince and a cheap brand that the Princess loved: Diana’s rainbow of rare stones… and why her favourites were fakes”
Harper’s Bazaar: “Why did Princess Diana own a Philadelphia Eagles Varsity Jacket?”
New York Times: “Prince Harry on His Murdoch Tabloid Fight and Big Tech”