Princess Diana Looked So Different With Longer Hair And Bangs As A Young Girl

Whether they're a fan of the British royals or not, anyone can describe the late Princess Diana of Wales in a few terms: shy demeanor, iconic fashion, and short blond hair. The princess came to be associated with her fair bixie cut, which only changed minimally during her time in the spotlight. From her years as a teenager linked to the future king of England to the world-famous Princess of Wales and her boundary-pushing fashion in her post-royal-family era (around the time Princess Diana debuted her leggiest looks), she kept her blond hair cropped. But photos from her childhood in the English countryside show a very different picture. Believe it or not, Diana had long hair and bangs as a young girl.

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In her late teens in the mid-to-late 1970s, Princess Diana rocked one of the trendiest hairstyles of the era: a feathery, layered bob. This was in stark contrast to the long, straight mane that fell below her shoulders that she had previously. She appeared to wear it parted to the side so that her thick blunt bangs also curved to the side. While the princess was a natural blond, Diana's locks also seemed a little darker in her youth than they were during her adult years — more similar to the mousier wheat blond she had as a young woman. Regardless of exactly how she was wearing her hair, though, her natural beauty shined through. "Diana was secure in how she looked, because she looked great," Diana's hairstylist, Sam McKnight, revealed to Vogue Australia in 2019. "To be quite honest, she looked beautiful coming out of the gym with wet hair in the morning."

A few public photos of Princess Diana's childhood remain, and in them, she often has longer, dark-blond hair and bangs. Although she wasn't royalty until she married Prince Charles in 1981, Diana was born into the aristocracy. More specifically, she was born at Park House near Sandringham in Norfolk, where the royal family notably has one of its estates, and was homeschooled as a child before attending day school and then boarding school at 12 years old. At the time, Diana loved ballet and even had growing up into a professional ballerina on her vision board so to speak, but fate had other plans. In 1975, her father, John Spencer, then the Viscount Althorp, became an earl, and Diana inherited the title Lady Diana Spencer. It's difficult to fathom in hindsight, but Diana worked as a babysitter and a kindergarten teacher before becoming a princess. She was engaged at the tender age of 19 and married at only 20.

Photos taken of Diana during her childhood show that she often wore hair accessories that were popular at the time, including headbands and hats. These preppy staples no doubt formed the foundation of Diana's posh aesthetic that developed into the Sloane Ranger style she was famous for in the 1980s. The princess embraced a look that brought to the fore refined knitwear, midi skirts, pearls, and plaid, and as an adult, she had the sophisticated volumized bob to match. 

Once Princess Diana cut her long hair, she never looked back. Though she kept variations of her bob cut during the 1980s, the new decade brought another change for the icon. Princess Diana's wardrobe changed after leaving the royal family, and her hair followed suit. She continued cropping her locks, eventually ending up with a bixie. "For that now iconic shoot [for British Vogue in 1990], I styled her hair so it appeared short for the picture," Sam McKnight noted in his 2019 interview with Vogue Australia, speaking of how her signature bixie cut evolved. "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." He added that the real driver behind Diana embracing the short hair was that it was easy and simple to style: "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."

The evolution from bob to bixie wasn't that dramatic when you compare it to some of the boldest celebrity hair transformations today, but Diana's fans were shocked. "It was July and I had left to shoot in Paris when I was inundated with phone calls about Diana's hair," McKnight told the outlet. "By then I realised that the change had caused quite an impact." The convenience of shorter locks may have been the drawing card, but check out our breakdown of the other reason why Princess Diana always kept her hair short.