The surprising story of how Princess Diana got her iconic bob haircut

Princess Diana's iconic 90s hairstyle made international headlines and went down in history as one of the most famous haircuts, but surprisingly, it wasn't a well-thought decision but rather an impromptu cut.

Princess Diana lived in a world where even the slightest change in her appearance became a front-page story. In November 1984, just weeks after the birth of Prince Harry, her hair was nearly shoulder-length which she wore with a clip on the side. However, it created such a huge controversy that she never tried long hair again. This was because whenever she changed her hair, it overshadowed Queen Elizabeth II and important royal events, as previously claimed by her then hairstylist Richard Dalton.

Dalton revealed that the late Princess was so careful not to overshadow her mother-in-law again, that they didn't cut hair short at once but did a snip every other day so people wouldn't notice a major change. However, five years later, Diana threw caution to the wind and took a split-second decision to change her hairstyle.

Sam McKnight, who became her personal hairstylist from 1990 until her tragic death in 1997, recently opened up about the memorable first time he met Princess Diana and she allowed him to change her hair. In a new video for British Vogue and YouTube U.K., McKnight recalled: "The first time I met the Princess of Wales was on a shoot. This leggy blonde comes bouncing up the stairs, smiled and made us all melt, and it was Princess Diana."

McKnight said he and Diana had a "really lovely day" doing portraits for British Vogue, in which he played with her hair and "made it look short under the tiara."

"I faked it a bit," he admitted.

After the photoshoot wrapped, the Princess of Wales asked McKnight how he would do her hair if he had complete freedom of choice, to which the hairstylist said that he would "cut it all off and just start again." To his surprise, Diana asked, "Well, why don't you just cut it off now?"

"So I cut it off then and we never looked back," revealed the hairstylist, who recently recreated Diana's hair-dos on Emma Corrin who portrays the Princess in the hit Netflix series "The Crown." Around three decades after he styled Diana's hair for her Vogue photo shoot, McKnight did Corrin's hair for her cover picture in the same magazine last year.

"From one Princess Diana to another. I remember that day. That was my first job after the first lockdown in summer [2020] and I remember when the job came in I wasn't quite sure that I was the right person to do this... And actually it was a pleasure and Emma was a pleasure, and I was quite taken by how alike Emma was to Princess Diana in her looks," the stylist confessed.