It’s been 23 years but I can’t forget that meeting with Diana in St Tropez, early in the morning, for the Dodi Al Fayed ring. Alberto Repossi, the jeweler at the center of the chronicles (and later of the trials) of the last summer of the princess of hearts before the fatal crash in Paris, confides in the Courier service. And it reconnects the emotions of that distant August that changed the Windsors forever, leaving a mark in the collective memory.
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In a cruise
Diana and Dodi were cruising on their yacht along the Mediterranean, they docked in Monaco and the princess arrived in front of the window of our boutique next to the Hotel Hermitage. Without even entering she pointed to a ring that had captured her, a ring from the Dis-moi oui collection, Tell me of s – says the jeweler -. Then they called me to make an appointment in St Tropez where they were headed, to define the choice and size of the ring. So I showed up a few days later in the small hotel in St Tropez which I remember had the rooms overlooking the central swimming pool, and to my surprise I found myself in front of Dodi and Diana. They were alone, without the usual entourage of bodyguards… in a semi-deserted hotel still, given the time, the conversation lasted 15-20 minutes, we didn’t have much time.
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What did he talk to Diana about?
I had arrived at the appointment with other examples of precious frames that I considered even more important for the woman at the time at the center of global media dynamics, but she stopped me immediately. He said “that’s okay”, confirming the choice made in Monaco of the jewel seen in the window, and I didn’t insist any more. Dodi and Diana asked me to collect the ring made to measure the princess’s ring finger, for August 30th, because on September 1st they said there would be an important announcement, an engagement. The ring had to be shrunk and it was not an easy model to adapt, I would have to send it back to the factory which was closed in August. But obviously, in front of the woman of the moment, everything was possible, we reopened the workshop in the middle of August for the ring that we delivered on August 30 in Paris, as promised. They came on purpose from Sardinia to Paris to collect it, and also to spend a few days in the house that had once belonged to the Dukes of Windsor and which I sensed was their intention to do a little buen retiro outside London.
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What struck her about Diana?
She was beautiful, she seemed serene even if not radiant … the most excited was Dodi, more excited even than me who was in front of the most pursued, admired woman in the world. To ease the emotions and tensions when Dodi later comes to pick up the ring in the boutique on Place Vendome I remember, we even tried to joke about the name of the collection that Tell me about it. I made a commitment to reserve and didn’t talk about the ring with anyone until….
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Finch?
In September, I got a call from the British tabloid Sun that he had learned from the Lloyds of London insurance company of the ring. The reporter asked me about the ring given to the princess, I said: “I don’t know anything about it”, this was the commitment of confidentiality that I had made with the Al Fayed. They published a photo of the Dis-moi oui collection with the news of the engagement gift … but they were unable to obtain precise information on which of the rings in the collection, which in the meantime we had made the commitment to cancel, had actually been chosen by the princess. In this way, my promise of confidentiality was somewhat safeguarded. And I didn’t worry any more. It was for years later, when the book by bodyguard survivor Trevor Rees-Jones was published, without remembering anything, that I knew it was time to come out.
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Perch?
Because in the book the bodyguard was left without memory after the crash, he remembered instead that Dodi had never collected any rings. Impossible, I had given it to Dodi myself. I then called old Al Fayed, told him it was time to talk and indeed to secure evidence of the actual withdrawal of the ring on August 30, a few hours before the crash in the night. The visit of the son to the boutique had in fact been recorded by cameras, we immediately secured that recording in the safe. It will be the beginning of a long season of interrogations.
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Why was that ring the center of so much attention?
The establishment’s work was beginning to prepare for Carlo’s future union, and as my personal idea, I think for a media issue they preferred to pass that last summer of Diana as the light summer of a princess, not as the season that precedes an engagement, a new true love. I agreed to go to London to testify, I was summoned a first time then a second time with my wife Gio ‘and they separated us.I remember hours and hours under the Scotland Yard press that reviewed the work of our factory, our employees, customs documents … and everything confirmed the actual processing and delivery of the ring. In the last interrogation, the third, with only Scotland Yard number one and the translator, I answered in French, I understood that I had better change the version. If I wanted to get out of that tangle of pressures. But it wasn’t my intention. I called my lawyers in Munich, we sent a registered letter to Lord Stevens in charge of the Diana case (who then resigned for health reasons), and in response from London came a clarification: no one had ever tried to suggest a change of version, it had to be it was a problem of misunderstanding, of translation … the fact remains that even the French Premire Dame, Bernadette Chirac, whom I knew well one evening in that season, talking to me, suggested “but come on, we mustn’t say all these things” alluding to the engagement ring .
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What happened to the ring?
No if its. ThePolice French told me that Lady D’s personal belongings were given to her sister. I don’t know if there was the ring ….
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Did you experience the Diana case firsthand, what idea did you have?
My interrogation after the accident, the fact that Diana was embalmed without an autopsy, and much more left me perplexed. Of course, I find it incredible that of the princess who entered people’s hearts more than twenty years later there is not a single statue in all London to remember her. Five or six years ago then Al Fayed one day invited me to breakfast at the Ritz and at a certain point he handed me a sheet: it was the answer that the London magistrate had received from the French about London’s request to send the doctor he had embalmed across the Channel. Diana and the paparazzi, to testify. It is prevented by reasons of national interest, Al Fayed told me angrily, who added: “Enough, now I attack the French too”. I suggested that he put his heart in peace now. I have often seen him over the years, getting older, more and more saddened, bitter towards those he called “colonialists”.
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Did you have any contact with the Windsors after the accident?
I met Prince Charles, together with Donatella Versace for an event with De Beers. it was a very cordial exchange. And I have kept in touch over the years with the foundation of the princess also to stop the proliferation of “pirate” copies of the princess of hearts ring that … when I met her that last time in Saint Tropez she also intended to give me a series of old bijoux to be renewed: bracelets, necklaces that the princess wanted to reassemble in a more modern way and for which we had already made an appointment to meet again in September. But fate decided otherwise.
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Harry e Meghan. Meghan reminds her of something about Diana?
Well … surely Harry must have found himself only after the death of his mother, Diana, who was not only beautiful, she was intelligent, polite. A royal way of doing things that I have found over the years in other clients of the Repossi maison. From Grace to Charlne di Monaco, passing through Carolina: Charlotte Casiraghi and my daughter Gaia who today has the artistic direction of the maison (with about 35% of the shares, the rest passed to LVMH in 2019) went to school together. Then Sheikh Mozah of Qatar and many others.
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Speaking of royalty, what do you think of the Juan Carlos case of Spain and the flight into exile?
I think that today there is no more secret for anyone, and especially whoever wears a crown ends up being a victim rather than a privileged one. Life is scanned every moment, and a prince or king has a moral duty to be an example. Humanly then I am sorry for Juan Carlos who must have thought he could be forgiven by virtue of the merits of his wise management of the country after Franchism. Different circumstances but the victorious Churchill in World War II comes to mind, who then lost the post-war elections.
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18 August 2020 (change August 18, 2020 | 10:29)
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