Meet Princess Diana’s number 1 fan who is reuniting Diana’s old belongings – and wouldn’t let Kate Middleton or Meghan Markle borrow them

From gala dresses to honeymoon hats, and from baby shoes to trinkets given to Diana’s beloved friends, Renae, 55, has scoured the globe in the hope of bringing them back together, spending an undisclosed amount in the process. 

“My job is to bring them all back into one resting place so that people can actually see them together one day. It’s never been about the money or how much things cost,” she tells HELLO!

It’s been 12 years since Renae, who owns the prestigious Los Angeles-based pre-school Camelot Kids with her husband, bought her first Diana piece – a burgundy Caroline Charles coat worn by the Princess in 1982. 

Since then, she has amassed 2,763 items, which she displays in The Princess Diana Museum, an online, interactive museum that she created and now curates. Later this year, more than 800 of those items will go on public view for the first time.

In this exclusive photoshoot and interview at her home in Los Angeles’s Los Feliz neighbourhood, Renae – joined by her close friend Richard Dalton, who was Diana’s hairstylist between 1981 and 1990, and who styled Renae for our shoot – reveals some of the items that will be shown at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum in Simi Valley, California, in November.

Diana’s belongings that will go on tour

Among them is the last dress that Diana tried on before she died in Paris in 1997, with pins still attached from the tailoring session. 

It will also feature the famous “Travolta dress”, the midnight-blue Victor Edelstein gown that she wore in 1985 to attend a gala at the White House, where she danced with John Travolta; Richard famously only had 15 minutes to style Diana’s hair that evening.

The dress, which is being lent by Kensington Palace, will be shown alongside the gown that Nancy Reagan, then the First Lady, wore on the same evening – the first time the two pieces will have been seen together for more than 40 years. 

The Prince of Wales and the Duke of Sussex will be invited to the opening gala – as will John Travolta – and Renae admits that none of this would have happened without the blessing of Diana’s sons, which she received in 2015 after writing to the Princes to explain her hopes of establishing a foundation that would shine a light on their mother’s life.

“I didn’t want to do something that was not respectful,” she says. “If they had said no, I wouldn’t be doing it.”

Three years later, Renae launched The Princess and the Platypus Foundation, with the goal of preserving Diana’s legacy by reuniting her belongings, in addition to staging exhibitions and events. The online museum, a part of the foundation, was established in 2020. 

It features a virtual avatar that guides visitors through 14 galleries of historical artefacts, as well as interviews with designers, hairstylists, and photographers who worked with Diana.

First encounter with Diana

Renae first met Diana as a 12-year-old schoolgirl when the Princess flew to Australia with Prince Charles and a young Prince William in 1983 for their first royal tour as a family. 

As part of their visit, the royals stopped at a biscuit factory in Yandina, Queensland; Renae’s school had been invited to attend, and Renae shook hands with Diana. As the Princess walked away, she dropped a trinket in the shape of a platypus, which Renae scooped up, running under the barriers in an attempt to give it back.

A police officer stopped her, closed her hand and told Renae that Diana must have dropped it deliberately for Renae to own. That platypus will take pride of place in the exhibition.

Five years later, an 18-year-old Renae managed to shake Diana’s hand again when she and Charles visited Sydney on a royal tour. 

On this occasion, Diana was wearing the now famous “caring dress” – the floral Bellville Sassoon shift dress that she often wore on hospital visits, lending it the name.

Renae’s lifelong mission

It wasn’t until 2014 that Renae’s collection began in earnest, when she and Livinio were asked to invest in a local restaurant. At the same time, a friend invited them to an auction where Diana’s Caroline Charles coat was among the lots.

“I really love that piece because she was holding Prince William on her hip, literally carrying him,” Renae recalls. “I felt that piece, in particular, would hold a lot more historical value as [time passed].”

Livinio encouraged her to “invest in a piece of history” instead of putting money into the restaurant, and she won the auction, using her savings to spend $125,000 (£94,440) on the item.

Six months later, an embellished Versace dress that Diana wore to be photographed for a magazine cover – and which Gianni Versace had designed especially for her – went up for sale at Julien’s Auctions, the globally renowned Beverly Hills-based auction house.

In June 1997, Diana famously sold 79 of her dresses at Christie’s in New York, raising $3.25m for Aids and cancer charities; since then, some of the gowns have been sold on in other auctions. Renae made an offer of $200,000, and won. 

“We knew, at that point, there was something that was sparked in me, but I still didn’t quite know what,” she says.

The collection, which is worth more than $10m, is stored in a secure unit, and Renae says that she would never let anyone – not even the Princess of Wales or the Duchess of Sussex – borrow an item to wear.

“No, no, no!” she exclaims when asked. She was horrified by the decision of the Ripley’s Believe It or Not! museum to let Kim Kardashian wear Marilyn Monroe’s Jean Louis-designed, crystal-encrusted 1962 dress to the Met Gala in New York in 2022. 

“That was a $4m dress, and now it’s not worth $4m because it’s [allegedly] been ripped,” she says.

Last year, Renae bid $400,000 for the “caring dress” in a Diana-themed auction held by Julien’s. Her reaction to winning her dream item, captured by HELLO!, made news around the world as she collapsed with joy. 

Now, she would love to find the bright yellow outfit Diana wore on the day Renae first shook her hand as a young girl, although she believes that it may be “long gone”.

Renae believes that many of Diana’s belongings were burned or donated after her death, which is why many of the items now being discovered have missing labels. 

Additionally, Diana’s stepmother, Raine Spencer, cleaned out Diana’s bedroom after she moved to London from Norfolk in 1978. According to Carl Ackerman – a butler at Althorp, the Spencers’ family home, at the time – she instructed him to offer Diana’s clothing to the staff or to dispose of it if no interest was shown.

During the process of amassing Diana’s belongings, the biggest surprise for Renae has been not just discovering how funny the Princess was – she owns more than 600 letters written by the royal, and says that they reveal her “wicked sense of humour” – but also how many personal items Diana gave to others.

She passed more than 60 items from her childhood to a homeless mother whom she first met in Knightsbridge, London, in 1979, and donated sterling-silver cufflinks to a charity auction. Diana also gave a travel frame, featuring a picture of herself with her sons, to a friend named Joy.

“The giving came from an innate place. It wasn’t put on – she gave from the heart,” Renae says. “That’s why I called the exhibition Diana: Love, Life, Legacy.”

If Diana were alive today…

In the wake of what would have been Diana’s 65th birthday on 1 July, Renae offers her views on how different the royal family might look today if she were still alive.

“She would not let the boys fight,” she says immediately, referring to the estrangement of William and Harry. “She would have done her job of bringing up William to be King, because that’s what she really wanted to do, and then she wouldn’t let the boys fight – she would have banged their heads together.

“And then she would have been such a great granny; she would have really loved those kids and had fun with them.”

Her work of the past decade has involved risk for not just Renae, but also her family – she and Livinio have remortgaged their home, which is now worth more than $2.3m, several times to enable her to continue bidding on Diana’s items.

Renae’s ultimate hope, meanwhile, is for the entire collection to return to the Princess’s homeland. “I don’t want to keep it,” she says. “I want it to end up in London, in a permanent place where people can honour her. That’s my end goal.”

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