Pieces of royal history sold for big bucks Thursday night, as 14 dresses worn by the late Princess Diana hit the auction block in Toronto.
Among the 14 dresses for sale, all evening gowns, was the famous blue silk-velvet off-the-shoulder dress Diana wore to a 1985 state dinner at the White House, when she famously danced with John Travolta.
That dress was the evening's top seller, going for $800,000.
Other dresses included a black velvet dress with a tartan skirt the princess wore to an event in Scotland, as well as a burgundy crushed velvet, low-back dress she donned for the premiere of "Back to the Future."
The dresses sold at Waddington's auction house for between $110,000 and $800,000. A detailed break down of each gown's selling price was not immediately available.
Waddington's had previously said it would donate part of the proceeds from Thursday's sale to the National Ballet School, in honour of the princess's support for both children's charities and the arts.
The previous owner of the gowns was American Maureen Rorech Dunkel, who purchased 12 of them as an anonymous bidder at a Christie's auction in New York. That auction took place eight weeks before the princess was killed in a car crash in Paris on Aug. 31, 1997.
Dunkel paid US$870,000 for the 12 dresses, and acquired two more via donation.
The gowns were among 79 that Diana had selected to be auctioned for charity, a sale that raised $5 million for various organizations at the time.
Dunkel, founder of The People's Princess Charitable Foundation, organized an international fundraising tour for the gowns that included stops in Toronto and Vancouver. The tour raised $1 million in its first four years.
Dunkel said last month that she hoped a single buyer would step forward to purchase the collection as a whole to be put on display, or to serve as a fundraising tool for a charity.
"I felt that with the wedding of (Prince) William and Catherine and the royal fever that is pretty much around the globe," Dunkel said, "it was just a really good time."
With files from The Canadian Press
