TEN DRESSES FROM the collection of Diana, Princess of Wales will go under the hammer in London next month.

The storied gowns were bought by collector Maureen Rorech Dunkel in 1997 when the Princess held her own charity auction of her most lavish evening wear.

She had initially bought the gowns as a long-term investment but after the Princess’s death, she decided to exhibit them for charity and has since raised thousands of dollars.

The ten dresses include iconic outfits that the Princess wore while on State visits in the 1980s. She wore one while dancing with John Travolta in the White House, while she was snapped by the world’s most renowned photographers in others.

Travolta and Princess Diana dancing to ‘You Should be Dancing’ from the Saturday Night Fever album. (Image: Anwar Hussein/Anwar Hussein/EMPICS Entertainment)

Unusually, Travolta had not been invited with a companion but he soon understood the reason.In an interview with chat show host Andrew Denton, he described how Nancy Reagan quietly took him aside and whispered that Princess Diana had only one wish for American trip – and that it was to dance with him. At midnight with a little prompting from the First Lady, he crossed the floor. He recalls, “She turned around and she did that look that she did so, so beautifully and I asked if she would care to dance and she said she’d love to and we danced for twenty minutes to a medley of ‘Grease’ and ‘Saturday Night Fever’…I was on cloud nine. She has great rhythm. We did spins and turns. We did a kind of modern fox-trot and she followed me very well. ‘Maybe some day we’ll get to do this in a less-watched situation’, I said near the end. ‘That would be great’, she replied.

The dresses can be viewed on 17, 18 and 19 March with the final sale taking place on 19 March at 3pm. For more details see Kerry Taylor Auctions.