Son of man who bought Diana's 'Revenge Dress' reveals he hoodwinked the BBC into believing the iconic gown was locked away in a bank vault... when it was actually hidden in plain sight

It is one of the most famous dresses in Royal history: the black silk Christina Stambolian gown that Princess Diana wore on the night that Prince Charles admitted having an affair with Camilla Parker Bowles on national television.

Known as the Revenge Dress, after she knocked her husband off the front pages, on June 29, 1994, it went on to be one of the star attractions at the much-anticipated auction of Diana's dresses at Christie's, in New York, three years later.

But, for nearly 30 years, the dress, which was bought for £44,511 by British businessman Graeme Mackenzie and his wife Briege, who owned the Body Shop franchise in Scotland, remained out of the public eye.

Now, as it goes on auction again at Sotheby's next month for an estimated £150,000 to £300,000, their son Euan has revealed that his father hoodwinked the BBC - and the general public - by claiming that it was being kept in a bank vault.

'That was a decoy,' he said. 'The dress, for the whole time, has been hidden in plain sight in our house. So, everybody that visited it walked right past it, not knowing it was sitting there, you know, ten feet away.

'It was actually kept in my grandfather's camphorwood chest...it was the perfect place to store it because camphorwood releases a kind of aroma from the wood that repels moths, bugs, things like that.'

Euan remembers vividly the day that he found out that his parents had bought the dress. He had just left the boarding school Merchiston Castle School, in Edinburgh, and was working at the Showcase Cinema, in Glasgow, where the family lived.

'The doorbell rang and it was surreal,' said Euan, 47, a district councillor and real estate agent, who now lives in Hokitika, a town on the West Coast of New Zealand's South Island. It was like a scene out of Notting Hill.

'I opened the door, and there were all these cameras flashing and microphones, and I'm standing there in this hideous maroon cardigan, and a clip-on tie, with Showcase Cinemas written on it.'

Princesa Diana wearing the 'revenge dress' in 1994. The Christina Stambolian frock was one of the star attractions at the much-anticipated auction of Diana's dresses at Christie's, in New York, in June 1997

The Revenge Dress is currently being exhibited at the Mandarin Oriental, Geneva, during Sotheby's Luxury Week, and will then go to Sotheby's Paris Galleries from November 19 to 23

At that stage Euan had no idea that his parents were interested in buying the dress. 'When they heard that the dresses were going to be auctioned, they applied for one of the leather-bound catalogues, and they got it, and they were going to keep that as a memento,' he said.

'Thumbing through it, they then must have hatched a plan and thought that they might have a go at bidding. They went into the room with all the dresses and ended up speaking to Christina Stambolian.

'And then all the doors closed, and Princess Diana walks in, and she comes up to my parents, and asks them if they're interested in any of the dresses. My dad said to her: 'Yes, we're interested in that one behind you, Ma'am,' and pointed to the dress.

'And she turns around, and it was lot two, a little black dress, and she said to my dad: 'Everybody loves that dress. So, from that chance meeting of Diana, it encouraged them to go after lot two definitively. And then they booked their flights to New York and went to the auction.'

After buying the dress, Euan's parents toured it around Scotland to raise money for charity. They wrote to her to say they had bought the dress and she wrote back, congratulating them. But two months later, Diana died and they put the dress in the camphorwood chest.

It is only now, after Graeme died last March, of Alzheimer's and vascular dementia, that his widow is selling the dress. She is donating a share of the proceeds to the NHS Lothian Charity on behalf of the Royal Edinburgh Hospital, which cared for her husband.

She will be staying with Euan in New Zealand on the day of the auction, at Sotheby's, in New York, on December 9. 'It's just too tough a memory to keep hold of something that they enjoyed together,' he added.

The Revenge Dress is currently being exhibited at the Mandarin Oriental, Geneva, during Sotheby's Luxury Week, and will then go to Sotheby's Paris Galleries from November 19 to 23.