How a gung-ho grandmother saving up to buy a new home snapped up five of Diana’s dresses for £120,000 – and weeks later began an incredible mission to honour the Princess of Wales after her tragic death

A hot night in a packed auction room at New York’s Christie’s in June 1997, the atmosphere reached a fever pitch as some of Princess Diana’s most iconic dresses went under the hammer.

When the black velvet Victor Edelstein dress Diana wore to the White House in 1985—famous for the occasion she danced with John Travolta—was bought for six figures, and dresses like the pearl-encrusted Catherine Walker “Elvis” dress picked up It was clear that this was a charity auction like no other.

Among the bidders was Ellen Petho, a mother and grandmother, who secured a coveted ticket. Mesmerized, she was on the edge of her seat when a scarlet metallic jacquard chiffon dress designed by Bruce Oldfield and worn several times by the Princess of Wales hit the auction block.

“Someone in the entertainment industry was also interested in the dress and Ellen was determined not to be outbid,” Ellen’s husband Louis said today. “There was a fight, but Ellen was fearless and kept going until the dress was hers.”

At the close of the auction, the self-made businesswoman – who, ironically, often shopped for herself at discount clothing stores – was the proud owner of five of Diana’s outfits. In all, they had cost her $150,000 (£120,000) – money the astute Ellen had saved to spend on a property.

On Friday, three of the dresses she bought (two were sold a few years ago) will be up for sale again at auction — this time at Julien’s Auctions in Beverly Hills, California, after Ellen passed away in January at age 82.

ESTIMATED AUCTION PRICE $200,000 to $400,000: Princess Diana in Bruce Oldfield’s iconic dress and (right) Ellen Petho in the dress

The memory of the night she bought them is still fresh in her husband’s mind. Incredibly, Ellen hadn’t told Louis she’d bid on the dresses.

“It was late at night when she called me and said, ‘Hey, I’ll tell you what I just did,’” Louis laughs about his wife’s purchases.

“I was surprised, but Ellen always had good reasons for doing the things she did, so I trusted that she knew what she was doing.

She didn’t want to continue with the advertising company she’d started, and she knew about Diana’s passion for helping children. She bought the dresses to continue that legacy – and of course it turned out to be a great thing.”

It sure did. Because instead of just driving them around to show off at fancy dinner parties, Ellen and her husband spent the next decade traveling all over the US in royal robes, raising over a million pounds for causes close to Diana’s heart. layers. including special needs and AIDS charities.

In the process, the couple had experiences they could only dream of, including becoming close friends with David Emanuel, who co-designed Diana’s wedding dress, and meeting two of Diana’s favorite couturiers, Bruce Oldfield and Catherine Walker.

Perhaps their greatest adventure of all was being invited to an afternoon tea with Diana’s brother, Earl Spencer, at Althorp in 2007. ‘Never,’ says Louis, ‘we imagined meeting Diana’s brother. But we did, and he was very nice.’

Such was her devoted reverence for the dresses that Ellen never touched them without gloves, even building a special temperature-controlled safe at her home in which to store them.

Going on sale this week is a two-tone Catherine Walker dress worn by Princess Diana at a 1991 gala dinner in Toronto, Canada, with an estimated retail value of $100,000 to $200,000 (£79,000-£159,000), while another Catherine Walker dress , an ivory and black number worn to a private function, has a sales estimate of $60,000 to $80,000 (£48,000-£63,000).

ESTIMATED AUCTION PRICE: $100,000 to $200,000: Diana in the Catherine Walker dress arrives at Toronto’s Royal York Hotel

Not to mention that scarlet Bruce Oldfield dress that captivated Ellen all those years ago and which the princess wore on several occasions, including the London premiere of the 1991 Hot Shots film, and which has an estimated retail value of $200,000 to $400,000 (£159,000). -£318,000).

Martin Nolan, executive director of Julien’s Auctions, says these are “conservative estimates” and there may be more to it. “A lot of people can remember seeing Diana in some of these dresses,” he says. “They are beautiful creations and works of art, but above all they form a connection to Diana, whose life was cut short and who is still missed.”

Most of all, Ellen’s family hopes that the buyer will see the dresses as Ellen did: as vehicles for good deeds.

Sure, you can’t help but compare Ellen’s philanthropic use of the dresses to the fate of another iconic dress: that of Marilyn Monroe’s “Happy Birthday Mr President” performance — the most expensive dress ever sold at auction after selling for $ 4.81 million had been sold – and which, controversially, was worn by Kim Kardashian to the Met Gala in 2022.

Martin Nolan, who also oversaw the auction of that Monroe dress in 2016, says: ‘When Ellen bought these dresses she had no idea Diana would be gone so soon – but she decided after her death that they were going to mean something . and she made that possible.’

Ellen’s remarkable involvement with Diana’s dresses came about by accident. She and Louis, who met as teenage sweethearts and were married for sixty years, raised their three daughters, Karrie, Christine, and Katherine, in Michigan.

A stay-at-home mom, Ellen returned to college as an adult student in 1988 and earned a degree in advertising and design before setting up her own interior design company and advertising agency.

Ellen and her daughters were fans of the princess, but it was her youngest daughter, Katherine, then 12, who was most captivated when Charles and Diana announced their engagement.

Over the years, mother and daughter collected royal memorabilia as they followed the twists and turns of Diana’s life. When the sale of 79 of Diana’s dresses was announced some 26 years ago, Ellen bought a $250 catalog from Christie’s as a gift for Katherine to “complete her collection” and was delighted to find two tickets to the preview of the auction in the book. .

ESTIMATED AUCTION PRICE $60,000 to $80,000: Catherine Walker dress worn to a private function

But Katherine, then a 28-year-old teacher, couldn’t get time off from work, so Ellen brought a friend to the preview. Ellen was thrilled to find out she was one of only 600 allowed to attend the auction – and began devising a plan to use the $150,000 she’d saved for as many of Diana’s dresses as possible, rather than the real estate investment that she originally intended.

‘When our mother received the catalogue, she had read the inscription that said Prince William told his mother not to hang the dresses in her closet; that they should go out into the world and do good things for different communities,” says Ellen’s eldest daughter Karrie, now 60 years old. “I think that inspired her.”

Karrie and her two sisters talk to me on the phone from Karrie’s kitchen, near the town where they grew up. Were they surprised when their mother told them what she had done? ‘Yes!’ they exclaim. “Our mom was an adventurer,” Christine adds affectionately.

Two months after the sale, the terrible news of Diana’s death in a car accident stunned the world, including the Petho family. ‘She was stunned when Diana died; devastated – like everyone else,” says Karrie. “I think that made it even more important for her to do this work and raise money for charities that Diana supported.”

Ellen had mannequins made for the five dresses, as well as custom-designed linen tote bags, each embroidered with a red rose, one of Diana’s favorite flowers.

Surely she must have been tempted to try them on? ‘She never tried them on; it would have destroyed the magic,” says Louis. “She treated them with respect.”

Ellen’s daughters never asked to try them on. “Our mother felt she was the guardian of these dresses, and we respected that,” Karrie agrees. Instead, Ellen showed off the dresses at charity events across the US. ‘I often saw people coming to the exhibitions and they started crying. It was the emotion of losing Diana and the memories,” says her husband.

Ellen answered many calls from charities. “She once got a call from a lady in Florida who had a mobile dental office in a converted bus that would go to poor neighborhoods to treat kids whose parents couldn’t afford dental appointments,” says Louis.

She asked if Ellen could help raise money to keep the service going, and Ellen found a location, shipped the dresses, headed to Florida and raised $30,000 in a few days, all because people loved those dresses. says Louis. “She also raised a lot of money for camps that took care of children with AIDS, because she knew this was a cause close to Diana’s heart.”

Ellen and her husband made several trips to London where they met some of the designers who made clothes for Diana. “David Emanuel became a good friend of ours and Bruce Oldfield was extremely kind when he found out Ellen owned the red dress,” recalls Louis, 83.

“We went to Catherine Walker’s studio. She was ill at the time (French-born designer Catherine Walker, who worked with Diana for 16 years, died of cancer in 2010) and we had a really nice chat with her husband when she came in.

“She told us that one of the dresses, an ivory and a white one, was made for a private function, probably a dinner at someone’s house, so there are no official photos of Diana wearing it.”

Diana’s brother Charles Spencer invited the couple to his home. “We were given a tour of the house and gardens, then we were shown to Earl Spencer’s study, where he sat and made tea,” says Louis.

Ellen continued her charitable work until her health deteriorated due to congestive heart failure. The family plans to use some of the money from the sales of the dresses to set up an art and design fair for adult students.

Interest in the items is high because Diana’s dresses so rarely hit the market, according to auctioneer Martin Nolan, who has managed the sale of many notable collections, including properties from the likes of Muhammad Ali, Michael Jackson and Elvis Presley. Mr. Nolan says, “Here in California, someone lives not far from the auction house who is very interested. It will be an exciting sale.’