It was just after 9am on 8 September, and the weather in New York City was perfect. The sun was shining. The temperature hovered at around 70 degrees. The dew points were low. And on Bleecker Street, it seemed like every woman on her way to get coffee or go to the gym was wearing the exact same thing: bike shorts and a baggy sweatshirt. The look has a clear origin: Princess Diana.
Every September, users on TikTok, Reddit, and Instagram begin to recirculate old photos of Princess Diana leaving the gym in spandex and a statement pullover. One enduring image shows her wearing a sweatshirt with the Virgin Atlantic logo; another, with the emblem of Harvard. She often sported collegiate designs, including a bright purple version from Northwestern. Some fans have even taken to calling it “Princess Diana Fall.”
How did it catch on? Part of the reason is that Diana was one of the most stylish women in modern history and a perennial muse to designers. Tory Burch cited her as an inspiration for her spring/summer 2020 collection, while Rowing Blazers recently re-released her beloved Warm & Wonderful sweater. But her athleisure looks have a story of their own.
Diana never liked being photographed in exercise clothes, yet there was an insatiable demand for private images of the Princess. In 1993, The Mirror reportedly paid £150,000 for photos of her working out at her health club. (She later sought legal action.) In the parking lot of her gym, she often walked backwards to avoid showing her face to photographers. Her most effective strategy, however, was sartorial: wearing the same outfit every single time – spandex bike shorts with a sweatshirt, over and over again. By repeating the look, she diminished the value of paparazzi shots; no newspaper wanted to pay a premium for a photo nearly identical to one already published.
“Every single session all the media were outside camped with their stepladders and cameras and lenses and everything,” her personal trainer Jenni Rivett recalled in 2018. “It wasn’t her that asked for all this. I remember one of her strategies was that she was going to wear the same Virgin Active sweatshirt every single session.”
By the 2010s, the internet and social media had cemented their influence. Images of Diana weren’t limited to magazines or newspapers but appeared constantly on blogs, Twitter feeds, and Instagram pages. At the same time, athleisure was exploding as a billion-dollar category, with brands like Lululemon and Alo Yoga rising to prominence. Diana’s ’90s gym looks suddenly felt not just nostalgic, but cutting-edge.
So go ahead, throw on a favorite sweatshirt, and head out the door. It would be rather regal to do so.
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