Her Princess Diana collection is built on manifestation. And a few re-mortgages
CNN · Leah Dolan ·
Renae Plant is thought to have one of the world’s largest private collections of the late royal’s belongings.
Renae Plant and her husband Livinio Stuyck were about to become restaurant investors. A local pizza place in their Los Angeles neighborhood had approached the couple, offering them the opportunity to own a small stake. It made sense: Plant and Stuyck had a nest egg already saved and some comparable experience in business; Plant has been the director and owner of the local Camelot Kids Preschool since 2008. “And then my best friend Kevin says, ‘Hey Renae, six of Diana’s dresses are at Julien’s,’” an auction house. “’You want to come have a look?’” she says with a wry eyebrow raise over video call.
Twelve years and more than 800 dresses, accessories and objects later, Plant believes she has cultivated one of the largest private collections of Princess Diana’s personal belongings in the world. “That was a miracle,” she said. “Because any day later and that would have gone in a different direction.”
This sense of divine intervention has followed Plant throughout her life. Her first brush with the late Princess of Wales was in 1983 while on a school trip to a ginger factory in Queensland, Australia. “I was beside myself, because I’d fallen in love with her when she got married, and the fairy tale,” she said. “Every girl’s dream was to marry a prince, back in the day.” But Plant, then just one of many 12-year-old schoolgirls waiting in line to meet Diana during her royal visit, got more than the standard handshake.