In an interview with the Telegraph this week, the 84 year-old photographer David Bailey was reliably outspoken about his experience photographing the Royals. The Queen, he said, had ‘beautiful skin,’ but Princess Diana on the other hand had ‘terrible hair’ when he shot her in the mid-eighties. He remarked, ‘You know, from the hairspray – solid as a plastic dummy.’ 

But then again, this was the 80s. Diana was often under intense spotlight, both literally and figuratively. Like many other high profile people of the time, not least the Royals, her hair was styled without one strand out of place. There also seemed to be half a dozen hairdressing techniques crammed into one look: feathers, layers and backcombing, all secured in place with what seemed to be half a can of the most globally-famous hairspray, L’Oreal’s Elnett. Like I said, it was the eighties.

Things changed for the Princess in the nineties, when she formed a close-knit working relationship with the notable British hairdresser Sam McKnight and the make-up artist Mary Greenwell, both of whom are still at the top of their games 30 years later. It was McKnight who chopped all of Diana’s hair off.