Princess Diana’s Hairdresser, Richard Dalton, Reveals the Secret Behind Her Iconic Hair—Including a Drugstore Favorite (EXCLUSIVE)
'I saw Diana pretty much every day for 12 years, and every day was different'
As the most photographed woman of her era, Princess Diana’s style was widely reported on, and one of the most immediately recognizable components of her glamorous looks was her majestic blonde hair. Diana’s voluminous, sculptural hairdos defined the ’80s, and countless women attempted to channel her signature mix of contemporary charm and classic elegance.
The man behind Diana’s most famous hairstyles, Richard Dalton, first met her before she became the Princess of Wales, and worked with her for over a decade. Given Diana’s constant public appearances, Dalton styled her hair nearly every day, and became one of her closest confidants in the many years they spent together.
Dalton and his friend Renae Plant, the founder of the Princess Diana Museum and one of the foremost collectors of Diana’s clothing and accessories, just coauthored a coffee table book, It’s All About The Hair: My Decade With Diana, H.R.H. Princess of Wales. On August 30, just a day before the 28th anniversary of Diana’s tragic death, Dalton and Plant will take to the stage for a special event at Richmond, Virginia’s Dominion Energy Center at Mooney Hall, where they’ll share stories and show Diana’s beloved Black Sheep sweater, which has never been displayed to the public, and the Falcon Dress, a 1986 design that only Dalton saw her wear.
Ahead of their event, Richard Dalton and Renae Plant sat down with Woman’s World to discuss how some of Princess Diana’s iconic hairstyles came together.
Becoming Princess Diana’s hairdresser
Dalton was trained by Antoine de Paris, who was known as the first celebrity hairdresser and worked with Princess Grace, the Duchess of Windsor, Elizabeth Taylor and Sophia Loren, and he first met Diana when she was a teen. “I was the manager of a salon and her sisters, Lady Sarah and Lady Jane, would come in on a Friday and have their hair blown out, as Sloane Rangers did in those days,” he recalls. “Diana would come in when she was 17 and still in school. I asked my assistant to look after her and he would blow her hair out. He struck up a friendship with her and actually did her hair for her wedding, which had nothing to do with me, but I did tell him right till 4 in the morning what to do and how to put a tiara on.”
Dalton soon began working more frequently with the Princess. “After that, I went to Australia,” he says. “My assistant went for one week because his wife had just had a baby, and Diana was obviously very against him leaving the baby for too long. I went for five weeks. I’d leave the hotel at 5 a.m., and it would be an hour’s journey. I’d do her hair at 7 a.m., and once I did her hair, I’d go back in the car to the plane and we took off at 9 a.m. She was always close behind me, and everything was scheduled down to the second.”
During this trip, Dalton and Plant also unknowingly had their first encounter. “That trip to Australia that Richard went on in 1983 was such a coincidence, because I actually met Diana during that time,” says Plant. “I was a 12-year-old on a field trip, and I was enamored by the Princess. When I met her, Richard had done her hair that morning. She shook my hand, and I was awestruck.” After their fateful meeting, Plant picked up a small clay platypus that Diana had dropped on the ground, leading her to eventually start a charitable foundation called the Princess & the Platypus.
What Princess Diana was really like
“I saw Diana pretty much every day for 12 years, and every day was different,” says Dalton. “If she was in Scotland and William and Harry needed haircuts, I’d fly up to Scotland. William loved when I used to do his hair because he’d get to watch extra television,” he says with a chuckle. “He’d sit perfectly still, glued to the TV while having his hair cut.”
“Sometimes I’d only have 15 minutes to blow-dry her hair and I was out, like when she went to the British Embassy to see Ronald and Nancy Reagan. I had to plug in my equipment and get her hair done quickly, and that was the night she danced with John Travolta while wearing a beautiful midnight blue gown. It all depended on the occasion,” Dalton says. He even sometimes found himself doing her hair while on a plane. “There’d be turbulence, and I used to think, ‘I hope I don’t stab her with this hat pin!’”
The monarchy isn’t exactly known for big laughs, but Plant says, “She had a wicked sense of humor. Not many people talk about how funny Diana was.” Dalton recalls receiving hilarious letters from the Princess, and says, “She used to pull pranks when we were on the plane. Sir John Riddle, her private secretary, would be there, and she’d take fake vomit and put it in his hand or in his briefcase, or she’d put a fake poop in the middle of the aisle.”
He continues, “A lot of times she’d say, ‘Richard, you can’t go out tonight.’ I’d ask why, and she’d say, ‘Dynasty is on and you’ve got to tell me all about it in the morning, because I’ve got to go to a boring reception.’ We’d always play Dynasty. She’d ask me to pass her her jewel box, and she’d play Krystle Carrington. We had fun times.” Diana may have been a Princess, but she was also a modern woman who appreciated the pop culture of her time.
“There are thousands of pictures of Diana, but she was incredibly beautiful in real life,” Dalton says. “Some mornings I would look at her and think, ‘Oh, my God.’ She was beyond beautiful both inside and out. She was incredible.”
When Princess Diana upstaged the Queen
As the People’s Princess, Diana didn’t always follow Royal conventions, and this extended to her hair. “We did the State Opening of Parliament, and I had to laugh, because the Queen was very upset. She was upstaged, and people said no Princess of Wales had ever grown her hair that long,” Dalton says. “She wanted to wear it up and have a change, and it was the first time she had that style. I asked her how many times she had changed her hair in the last 10 years, and she went, ‘Oh, what’s the matter? Can the Princess not change her hair?’ It was a grand occasion. Where else would you wear a white evening gown and a tiara in the afternoon?”
“If we ever intended on doing something different, we cut her hair probably every other day, just a quarter of an inch, so she could have her hair shorter, but none of the press noticed it,” Dalton notes, adding that he also liked to occasionally put her hair in a French twist, a style he learned from Antoine de Paris.
Stolen flowers and unexpected jewels
One of Dalton’s favorite looks (seen on the cover of his book, no less!) was created on the fly. “We were in Bangkok. I asked what we were going to do. We always did something quirky, like when she wore a white dress with red spots to match the Japanese flag when we were in Japan,” he explains. “She wanted orchids in her hair and asked where to get them, and I said, ‘Leave it to me.’ I’d seen some beautiful arrangements in the foyer of the hotel, so I went down, and when no one was looking, I ‘borrowed’ them. I didn’t steal them! She was wearing a beautiful pink and purple Catherine Walker sash dress. I saw some footage, and from her face you can tell she felt amazed.”
Another striking look came about in an effort to draw attention away from a beauty mishap. Dalton remembers, “She was sunburned on the back of her neck, and she had this beautiful emerald choker that was Queen Mary’s. I suggested we do a headband. She asked how I would do it, and I needed to get knicker elastic, which is like a quarter-inch elastic that grannies would put in their knickers to keep them up. I got a piece of the elastic and put it on that way, and she ended up wearing the emerald necklace on her forehead.” “No one in the Royal Family had ever worn jewels like that,” Plant points out. “It was such a sensational fashion moment.”
Surprisingly, Diana wasn’t a big fan of wearing tiaras. “The tiara used to hurt her. You see pictures of her holding her head because it killed her,” Dalton explains. After one too many cumbersome tiaras, the hairstylist realized knicker elastics would also come in handy for making them more comfortable on her head. Dalton experimented with the elastic and finally found a solution, recalling, “I put it back on her head, and she said, ‘I don’t know what you did, but that’s perfect.’ She never complained about it again.”“Sometimes when I see Princess Catherine in a tiara, I wonder if she has a knicker elastic in the back!” he says.
The drugstore staple Princess Diana relied on
You might think that Dalton relied on expensive products to create Diana’s hairstyles, but this wasn’t actually the case. “She loved Elnett,” he says, and this old-school L’Oréal hairspray has been an inexpensive drugstore staple since 1960. “I remember once we were in a boat, and she looked down and saw a can of Elnett bobbing in the canal and said, ‘I hope Richard hasn’t fallen in!’” he says with a smile.
“Normally we’d use heated rollers and then once I got the style in place, I sprayed it with Elnett,” Dalton says. “I did that for her first official pictures with Harry. She loved big hair, and the look got branded as ‘Dynasty Di.’” Dalton would also do treatments on Diana’s hair, and remembered young Prince William complaining about the chemical smell, but the stylist would do whatever it took to make Diana look as fabulous as possible.
Princess Diana’s legacy of service and style
Nearly 30 years after her death, Princess Diana seems more popular than ever, as she continues to be a frequent subject for movies and TV, and has won a new following of young fans on social media. “She had this magnetic gift that was so powerful. She had humanitarianism, kindness and compassion,” says Plant. “She was way ahead of the time when she took her gloves off to shake hands with AIDS patients. That was huge, because people thought that if you did that you were going to die. She took all these stigmas away from people, and it came from a genuine place. It wasn’t staged. She was only Princess for 16 years before she passed, which was a really short period of time, especially given the gravity of what she was able to accomplish around the world.”
“She truly was something else,” Dalton agrees. “I think her fashion is timeless, and it’s wonderful to see Princess Catherine doing a slight twist on her looks.” “I’ve seen a couple of pictures where she’s got the tiara and her hair looks absolutely perfect, and I’ll think, ‘Wow, I did that!’ Every morning, I’d say how fortunate I was to be doing her hair, and she’d just joke, ‘Shut up!’” he says. Clearly, the Princess and her hairdresser had a special relationship filled with humor and heart, and her hairstyles continue to inspire decades later.
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