Why Princess Diana Always Kept Her Hair Short

Nearly three decades after her death, Princess Diana remains a legend. With each new generation, the late royal's natural sense of style and trail-blazing trends live on, but perhaps none has been so iconic as her hair. Born Lady Diana Spencer in 1961, the princess was globally popular by the time she married into the royal family in 1981, but it wasn't until the '90s and her departure from the firm that she became a style icon in her own right. Her look in that decade was defined by her signature bixie — a face-framing haircut that will make you look younger — that she never really changed. And according to Sam McKnight, her hairstylist and the man who cut the bixie for her in 1990, there was a specific reason that she avoided growing her hair again.

"She was very clever, because she knew that even if she changed her parting, the press would be focusing on that instead," McNight told Harper's Bazaar Australia, explaining that the princess kept her hair the same so that the press coverage would remain on the important charity work she was doing. "We would go to Pakistan, or [meet] Mother Teresa, [go] all over the world really, to refugee camps and all these places that I found really harrowing," McKnight went on. "It takes a very, very, very special type of person to do what she did — that really opened my eyes." He added that Diana "knew she was bringing amazing attention to these places" and didn't want to shift the focus. "She wasn't a vain fashion woman ... [but] she knew it wasn't about her hair, she couldn't make it about her hair."

When she walked down the aisle of St. Paul's Cathedral in 1981 and became the Princess of Wales, Diana had a simple rounded bob that she continued to style throughout the '80s. As the decade went on, she experimented with the fashion of the time, ebbing and flowing from box bobs to shullets (a mix between a mullet and a shag) and everything in between. But things changed during a fateful British Vogue shoot with Patrick Demarchelier in 1990. 

"For that now iconic shoot, I styled her hair so it appeared short for the picture," Sam McKnight recalled to Vogue Australia in 2019. "Afterwards she asked: 'What would you do if I gave you free reign?' and I replied: 'I'd just cut it all off.' Her hair was fabulous, but it was time for a change, and I think she felt that, too. So she said: 'Okay, do you want to do it now?' So I did." 

Neither McKnight nor the princess could have predicted the global response to the big chop; McNight later told Harper's Bazaar Australia that "the whole world went absolutely insane" when the photos were released. "It was July and I had left to shoot in Paris when I was inundated with phone calls about Diana's hair," he shared with Vogue Australia. "By then I realised that the change had caused quite an impact."

It's understandable that once Princess Diana saw how the global press responded to her bixie cut, she wanted to avoid anymore uproar that could take away from the important work she was doing. But the longevity of the hairstyle comes down to more than her selfless heart; it also fit in beautifully with her style aesthetic, particularly in the 1990s when she was known for her power suits and unapologetic attitude. 

It's no exaggeration that Princess Diana's style changed dramatically after she left the royal family. "She was evolving, she was changing the way she looked, her dress sense was evolving, her sense of her self was evolving," Sam McKnight revealed to Show Studio in 2015. "So we cut her hair pretty short." He noted that they took inspiration from supermodels of the time, including Linda Evangelista and Cindy Crawford. "She was intrigued at what made them tick and how they dealt with the fame thing ... famous for how they looked," he explained.

The other appealing part of the bixie to Diana was the fact that it was simple. For all her international stardom, designer clothes, and money in the bank, McKnight confirmed that she preferred a pragmatic approach to life. "It wasn't about having some hairstyle that she couldn't get in the wind or anything like that — for her it was about practicality," he told Vogue Australia. "She didn't wear a whole lot of makeup and she wore clothes that she felt comfortable in." She really was ahead of her game — just check out Princess Diana's brilliant hack for avoiding wardrobe malfunctions for further proof.