Lady Di’s hairdresser reveals his memories of the princess 27 years later: “People ask me if I kept a lock of hair”

In the 1980s, Princess Diana of Wales, already a style icon, had accustomed the public to a blonde mid-length. But one day, specifically on the day of the opening of the British Parliament in 1984, she decided to innovate with a sophisticated chignon. A mistake. As revealed by royal biographer Andrew Morton in a 2002 documentary, Queen Elizabeth II was very angry when her daughter-in-law made her appearance: Lady Di and her new hairstyle had stolen the spotlight from her. Richard Dalton, the late Diana’s trusted hairdresser for a decade and the creator of that hairstyle, has for the first time dusted off memories of that day. “Diana’s new and glamorous hairstyle appeared on all the covers the following day, completely eclipsing the solemnity of the occasion. The princess learned her lesson and swore that her hair would never again be the centre of attention and distract people from the work of royalty,” says Dalton, who until now had never spoken about his relationship with the princess. “From that point on, I only cut her hair a quarter of an inch at most. Because it was short, I could have her ready in 15 minutes,” says the hairdresser, whose statements are part of the book. It’s All About The Hair: My Decade With Diana [Se trata del cabello: mi década con Diana]written by Renae Plant, a leading collector of princess memorabilia.

“I’ve never spoken publicly, but Diana died 27 years ago and I was part of her story,” Dalton says. Of her hairstyle, he says it was “simple and flattering.” He describes her as “hilariously funny, incredibly glamorous and even more beautiful in real life than her photographs show.” When Diana lived at Kensington Palace, Dalton would do her hair most days at 8 a.m. He accompanied her on every royal tour between 1983 and 1991, and helped create some of her hairstyles. looks more iconic, such as those nicknamed Dynasty Di, The Elvis either The Vera Lynn“I want to share my stories to preserve his legacy,” she anticipates.

These stories include Princess Diana tying a majestic emerald tiara onto a knicker band or him washing her hair in the kitchen sink – “I always joke that I could have sold that stainless steel sink for a fortune” – but Dalton also witnessed less pleasant details of Lady Di’s private life. “My bloody husband has disappeared again,” she told her hairdresser, “in pieces,” while the then Prince Charles rekindled his romance with Camilla. “Diana was madly in love with her husband. I saw her day in and day out. The love she felt for Charles was genuine. If Camilla had stayed away after the wedding, things could have been very different,” he says.

The tiara tied with a knicker elastic has an explanation. It happened in 1985, during a tour of Australia. Diana was sunburned and couldn’t stand Queen Mary’s emerald jewel on her forehead. “I tied one end of the elastic to the emerald necklace and put it on Diana’s forehead. I positioned it at the back so it would fit comfortably without falling off and I combed her hair around it. Diana loved it,” Dalton recalls. He used the same remedy when the Princess of Wales began to get a headache wearing the Lover’s Knot diamond tiara, now a favourite of Kate Middleton. “We were in New Zealand at a state dinner. She took the tiara off and handed it to me, saying, ‘I can’t wear it, it’s killing me. ‘ I ran to my room, took the elastic out of my knickers, put the tiara on my head and adjusted it. “I ran downstairs, put it on her and quickly fixed her hair to hide the elastic. She never complained about it hurting again,” explains the Scottish hairdresser. “I often wonder if the elastic on the knickers is still there when Princess Kate wears them.”

Lady Di and Richard Dalton first met when he was a department store manager and she, then 17, went with her older sisters, Lady Sarah and Lady Jane, who worked at the nearby magazine VogueHowever, their working-life relationship did not take hold until after her wedding to Prince Charles in 1981. After Diana’s stylist Kevin Shanley betrayed her and sold her story to the tabloids, he approached Dalton and said, “Will you be my full-time hairdresser?” Dalton, who then owned a beauty salon in London’s luxury Claridge’s hotel, agreed to sell it in order to devote his full time to the princess.

“People ask me if I kept a lock of her hair. I never did. It didn’t occur to me. I only have one photograph of us together that someone took as we got off a plane. It was a different time, there were no mobile phones,” she admits today. She also recalls that Prince Charles, always committed to the environment, banned all aerosols in Keningston Palace, including the hairspray cans that Dalton used to style the princess’s hair. “They asked me what hairspray I used and I said, ‘A non-aerosol spray’. Diana thought it was very funny. Charles never found out the truth,” she confesses.

Over the years, Dalton was much more than just a hairdresser for Diana, becoming her greatest confidant. “Every woman trusts her hairdresser and she was no exception,” he says in the book. “Being the keeper of such big secrets sometimes made me feel very stressed. My job was to listen to her, help her feel beautiful and confident and bring a little bit of the real world into her world,” he says. Together they lived everyday moments like watching the miniseries Dynasty ―”She would force me to watch it if I couldn’t because of work commitments and the next morning she would say: ‘Tell me everything!’― while they ate fruit sweets and “Nestlé white chocolate with crunchy pieces”. Dalton also boasts of having been the architect of the first haircuts of Princes William and Harry: “They loved it because getting a haircut meant more time in front of the television.”

Among the most lurid memories are the two times he heard Charles shout at Diana. One was when, egged on by Sarah Ferguson, he explains, she dressed as a policewoman to sneak into the nightclub where Prince Andrew was celebrating his stag night. “Charles was not amused. The next morning he was shouting at her, really shouting. She was crying and he was shouting: ‘You’re the Princess of Wales, you don’t do things like that!’” The other was when she danced on the stage of the Royal Opera House as a surprise for Charles’s birthday. “She danced Uptown Girl by Billy Joel and the audience went crazy. But Carlos was furious,” he confirms.

Dalton and Diana went their separate ways in 1991, when he moved to the United States. He now resides in Laguna Beach, California. Curiously, this new destination led him to style the hair of a young Meghan Markle when she was a hostess on the American show. Deal Or No Dealbetween 2006 and 2007, a decade before she met her future husband, Prince Harry, the youngest son of Diana, Princess of Wales, and the current King Charles III. “He was quite distant,” Dalton recalls of the woman who would become Lady Di’s daughter-in-law.

Her favourite hairstyle was done in 1988, during Diana and Charles’ tour of Thailand: “I ran around the Imperial Hotel in Bangkok, picking orchids from the flower arrangements to use as accessories in Diana’s hair, to match her dress. She looked absolutely incredible that night. That’s how I’ll always remember her.”