It was just after 9 a.m. on September 8, and the weather in New York City was perfect.
The sun was shining. The temperature hovered at around 70 degrees. The dew points were low.
And on Bleecker Street, it seemed like every woman on their way to get coffee or to the gym was wearing the exact same thing: bike shorts and a baggy sweatshirt. Including me. Sometimes I can’t tell you why I succumbed to a clothing trend—so much of what hangs in my closet feels like it was purchased by Adam Smith’s invisible Essie-polished invisible hand.
But this particular outfit? I can tell you exactly where it came from: Princess Diana. Oh, yes. Every September, users on TikTok, Reddit, and Instagram begin to recirculate old photos of Princess Diana leaving the gym in spandex and a statement pullover.
A popular image shows her wearing a sweatshirt with the Virgin Atlantic logo; another, with the emblem of Harvard. (She had a thing for American universities: in addition to the Ivy League school, she often wore a bright purple design from Northwestern.) Some have even taken to calling it Princess Diana Fall—or, those glorious few weeks in September where it is warm enough to still show off your legs but just cold enough to wear a comfy sweatshirt.
How did it catch on? Sure, part of the reason is that Diana was one of the best-dressed women in history and therefore a perennial muse to designers. (Tory Burch, for example, cited her as an inspiration for her spring 2020 collection, while Rowi.
