How three of Princess Diana’s dresses were left in a second-hand shop… by Fergie’s mum

Today they are kept hidden away from photographers’ flashbulbs in temperature-controlled chambers, where they are part of a royal clothing archive dating back 500 years.

Yet three of Princess Diana’s iconic dresses were only saved from the country after being rescued from a Hampshire thrift store.

Stranger still, they had been brought there by none other than the mother of Sarah Ferguson, Duchess of York.

The how or why remains a mystery. But as I reveal in my book Diana: A Life in Dresses, the late princess was surprisingly relaxed about her clothes, despite her love of fashion.

There was also a tartan coat (pictured) made for the Princess’ visit to Italy in 1985 by the Emanuels, the British husband-and-wife team who made Diana’s wedding dress

Valuables were routinely thrown away or left behind. She was also generous and gave a lot to friends and family. The fact that so many have survived for posterity is often due to excessive chance.

The three outfits in question are now in the storage room of the Royal Ceremonial Dress Collection in Hampton Court after that mysterious intervention by Susan Barrantes.

A source confirmed to me that Barrantes transferred three of them to an upscale Hampshire resale shop sometime in the 1990s.

These were a green tartan day dress that the Princess wore to the Braemar Highland Games in September 1982, and a turquoise Catherine Walker dress that she took on a royal tour of Australia and New Zealand in April 1983.

There was also a tartan jacket made for the Princess’s visit to Italy in 1985 by the Emanuels, the British husband-and-wife team that made Diana’s wedding dress.

From the Hampshire dress shop, they went up for auction before being purchased by Historic Palaces England.

Did Diana give them to her friend Sarah Ferguson as hand-offs? Were they just left lying around the Duchess of York’s Sunninghill Park estate in Berkshire?

Was Ferguson’s mom somehow asked to sell the outfits on Diana’s behalf — and was it just the three dresses?

Princess Diana in a blue Catherine Walker outfit on tour of Australia and New Zealand in 1983

Was Sarah Ferguson’s mother somehow asked to sell the outfits on Diana’s behalf – and was it just the three dresses?

Sadly, Susan Barrantes passed away in 1998, less than a year after the Paris car accident that killed Diana and the vintage store in question has yet to be identified.

It’s not the only time a provincial thrift store has come to the rescue of fashion fans.

An ivory moss crepe evening dress designed by Emanuels, which Diana had worn in Bahrain in 1986 to a lavish banquet in her honor, ended up in a clothing store in Hereford.

Diana is said to have given the dress to her childhood friend, Caroline Twiston-Davies.

In 1996, her housekeeper took the dress — along with “more everyday clothes and suits” — to Chameleon, a vintage clothing store near Caroline’s family estate.

As I explain in my book, a few months later it was initially purchased for £200 by the shop’s part-time sales assistant, who intended to carry it to a hunting ball himself. Instead, it remained unworn, locked away in a box, until she realized its historical significance.

It was sold at auction in 2018 for £162,500.

Before announcing her engagement to Prince Charles in February 1981, ‘Shy Di’ had been shopping for an outfit to match her sapphire starlet – and had hoped to find something at Bellville Sassoon, a luxury salon in Knightsbridge.

However, the imperious French shop assistant did not recognize the nervous teenager as the future Princess of Wales and was angry that she came in so close to closing time.

“It was five o’clock at night and this little girl came in and didn’t know what she wanted,” explains fashion designer David Sassoon. ‘The assistant said, ‘Do you want a dress? A suit?” Diana said, “I’m not sure.”

“She showed her a few things, and Diana thought they weren’t right. So she suggested Diana go to Harrods.’

That’s what she did: there she bought a cobalt blue skirt suit from the British label Cojana that she wore to defy the world’s press on the steps of Buckingham Palace.

The black taffeta strapless ballgown that Diana wore for her first public engagement to Prince Charles in March 1981 — and which she famously nearly fell out of when she got out of their car — was kept in a garbage bag for decades and forgotten about.

It was returned to the Emanuels to be included, as Diana has lost a lot of weight in her early marriage.

The Duchess of York with her mother, Susan Barrantes, who donated some of Princess Diana’s dresses to a thrift store

However, instead of changing it, the Emanuels decided to make a new version from scratch and put the original in a garbage bag for safekeeping.

It wasn’t found until years later, in a corner of the designers’ Mayfair studio.

In 1997, just two months before her death, Christie’s in New York had held an auction of 79 dresses, raising £1.96 million for her favorite AIDS charities.

Many of them are now in public hands.

Today, the long blue and white dress that 18-year-old Diana wore to her coming-out prom at Althorp, the Spencer family estate, was purchased by a Utah neonatal nurse. It is now owned by a fashion museum in Chile.

• Diana: A Life in Dresses, from Debutante to Style Icon, by Claudia Joseph, out now (£40, ACC Art Books)