The Truth About Princess Diana's Short Haircut

Princess Diana was a fashion icon in her day, and she is a fashion icon today. In Channel 4's new documentary "Diana: Queen of Style," released on November 15, the filmmaker explored how the Princess of Wales continues to influence generations of designers, as the Daily Mail noted.

"I think Diana inspires a lot of high fashion designers, because she was seen as the royal rebel ... I feel that when people are referencing Diana, they are trying to capture that chic, couture element, but with a rebellious touch," British model Leomie Anderson said. In 2017, Eleri Lynn, curator of the "Diana: Her Fashion Story" exhibition, went as far as to compare Diana to some of the biggest icons of the 20th century. "She is stepping into that same sort of space as an Audrey Hepburn or Jackie Kennedy, a fashion icon whose style is so emulated and so loved," Lynn told Vanity Fair.

Diana's iconic style wasn't contained to her fashion choices, though. The British princess also inspired plenty of women around the globe to take magazine clippings to their hairdressers to try to emulate her hairstyles. As Tatler noted, Diana rocked a stylish feathered shag swept to the side and, in true royal style, adorned with a hat throughout the 1980s. But it was the 1990s that marked the apex of Lady Di's hairstyle game with the head-turning pixie cut that stayed with her until she died. In the Channel 4 documentary, Diana's hairstylist shares the story behind it. 

In "Diana: Queen of Style" (via Insider), Princess Diana's hairstylist Sam McKnight described the decision to chop off her hair as an impulsive, albeit collaborative, effort. The haircut came shortly after Diana and McKnight met on the set for a Vogue photoshoot in 1990, McKnight told British Vogue in April.

To produce the iconic shots, McKnight tucked the princess' hair under the tiara, making it look extra short, he explained. After the shoot, Diana asked McKnight what he would do to her hair if he could do anything at all, "I could sense that she wanted to change. I said I'd just cut it all off. Cut it all off and start again. So she said 'Ok, let's do it,'" McKnight said in the documentary, per Insider. She asked him to do it right then and there, he told British Vogue. And just like that, the pixie cut was born. "We never looked back," he said.

In "Diana In Her Own Words" (via Vogue), a documentary that features interviews recorded by the princess herself, Diana described the moment as a turning point in her life. In response to a friend who asked her to pinpoint the moment she went from "victim to victor," Diana returned to the decision to cut her locks. "I suppose last summer when Sam cut my hair differently, it let out something quite different," Diana said. After learning this, McKnight noted that "hair is so powerful."