Princess Diana has been regarded as one of the most well-dressed women in history, but her hair iconic blonde hairstyle is just as memorable. And when it came down to perfecting her look, the late Princess of Wales went through great lengths to ensure it always stayed in place.
According to new a report, Princess Diana had a hairspray specially made for her whenever she flew on a helicopter to avoid so-called “helicopter hair.” “When she would get off the helicopter, the blades would just spin and spin and her hair [would blow],” Sheree Ladove Funsch, a cosmetic chemist who worked closely with Diana and her hairdresser Richard Dalton, recently told Page Six. “So her beautiful coiffed, cute little cut would go crazy.”
Ladove Funsch—who now heads LaDove Inc., a beauty business founded by her family—said Diana wanted a specific formula that would keep her elegant feathered cut in place without making it look unnatural. “She didn’t want anything that would make her hair look glued down because she was so young and so beautiful,” Ladove Funsch said. “She didn’t want… a helmet-head kind of look.”
So in order to create the perfect so-called “helicopter hairspray,” Ladove Funsch embarked on several international trips to explore forests and terrains to source exotic ingredients fit for the Princess’s hair. “We found this gum resin from a tree and that’s how we were able to create this formula [for Diana],” said Ladove Funsch. “I was literally in [the lab] formulating myself, figuring out what’s the melting point of this resin, how do we get it so that it’s not so sticky and tacky? How do we get it so that it doesn’t harden?”
Diana was so pleased with the product that she had Ladove Funsch make another kind of hairspray that she could use when she wore tiaras. Only that formula was even trickier to make because Ladove Funsch had to use ingredients that wouldn’t effect the the gemstones. “When she would wear a tiara, you’re talking about millions and millions of dollars of jewels on her head,” revealed Ladove Funsch. “We had to create something that wasn’t as potent as a hairspray but that would still give her a bit of hold… without ruining the jewels.”
Princess Diana also used a specially-formulated hairspray whenever she wore tiaras.
While the two hairsprays have never become available to the public, Ladove Funsch believes Diana might have been open to a business opportunity down the line. “I’m not saying she wouldn’t have launched it eventually and [didn’t want] to do something like that, but that wasn’t the intention,” she said. “It was just to [create] something amazing [for her].”
