Princess Diana never wore hats on official visits with children for this reason

The Princess of Wales would refuse to wear hats while making official visits to meet children because “you can’t cuddle a child in a hat”, a curator at Kensington Palace has said.

Diana regularly wore a blue floral dress during such visits that became known as her “caring dress” because she knew children liked the bright print. However, she would never wear the matching hat that was meant to go with the dress.

Curator Claudia Acott Williams told The Telegraph that the princess also often wore “big costume jewellery because she would pick children up and they would play with it”.

The original sketch of the blue dress by designer David Sassoon is one of several royal items featured in a new exhibition at Kensington Palace, where Diana’s wedding dress is also on display for the first time in 25 years.

Diana wore the blue dress on a number of occasions, including a 1990 visit to Lagos University Teaching Hospital, Nigeria; to see AIDS victims at The Lighthouse Project in London in 1992; and during a visit to a children’s hostel in Sao Paolo, Brazil, in 1998.

Sassoon’s hand-drawn sketch also features a large matching hat, which Diana never wore because she could not hug children while wearing it, said Williams.

The exhibition, titled Royal Style in the Making, explores the relationships between designers and the royals.

Her sartorial choices “really illustrates just how carefully she considered the people she would meet when selecting outfits for her many public engagements”, added Matthew Storey, curator at the Historic Royal Palaces.

Visitors to the exhibition will be treated to never-before-seen items from the royal archives and a unique look at the process behind some of the most important couture commissions in royal history.

For the first time, an 18th-century style gown worn by Princess Margaret will go on display alongside the original design sketch by Oliver Messel. She wore the gown to a costume ball in aid of St John’s Ambulance in July 1964 at Mansion House.

A rare surviving toile for the 1937 coronation gown of Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother, created by court designer Madame Handley-Seymour, will also be on display.

The exhibition will run from 3 June to 2 January 2022 at Kensington Palace.