Diana dress story comes unravelled,led lighting
A Canadian auction house is defending its handling of a high-profile June sale of 14 dresses that once belonged to Diana, Princess of Wales – most of which were not actually purchased, despite widespread reports at the time they were all sold for bids totalling $3 million.
Included in the impressive collection offered at Waddington’s June 23 sale auction in Toronto was a showcase evening gown worn by Diana on a visit to the U.S. in 1985. The dark-blue, velvet dress, immortalized when the princess danced with actor John Travolta at a White House reception, initially was said to have sold for a “bargain” price of about $800,000 at the sale.
The 13 other dresses on offer reportedly sold for some $2 million.Now, however, Waddington’s has acknowledged the “Travolta” gown and 10 of the other Diana dresses supposedly sold at the June auction were not, in fact, purchased by buyers.Instead, the company said Tuesday in a statement aimed at ending confusion surrounding the sale, just three dresses were sold at the auction and a fourth was purchased later.
What happened, according to the statement from Waddington’s vice-president of business development, Stephen Ranger, was that the consignor of the Diana dresses – Florida businesswoman Maureen Rorech Dunkel – set such high “reserve” or minimum prices on most of the items that bidders failed to reach those levels.”The remaining lots failed to meet the reserve price set by the consignor and were ‘bought in’ by the consignor,” Ranger said, explaining that “buying in” is a common practice and means that “in the case of the Diana dresses, the auctioneer placed bids on behalf of the consignor” up to the reserve price.
The confusion over the auction’s outcome stemmed largely from comments attributed to Ranger at the time of the sale. He was quoted saying the $800,000 top bid for the Travolta dress represented “an exponential return on its original purchase price, and I think 10 years from now, people will be looking on that price as a bargain.”
In Tuesday’s statement, the Toronto firm said “comments ostensibly made on the auction floor by representatives of Waddington’s appear to have been quoted out of context. In the interest of protecting the consignor’s confidentiality, Waddington’s has made no comment on the specifics of the sale until now.”