It was the umbrella that would make this suit famous. Walking through the Royal Enclosure with her sister-in-law the Duchess of York, they came up behind Sarah's friend Lulu Blacker, and in full view of TV and still cameras joking poked at her rear with their 'brollies'. This 'Brolly Folly', as it was dubbed, drew much bad press - 'The Sun' in reporting the incident referred to Fergie and Diana caustically as “silly, simpering girls.” As she later told Andrew Morton, when Sarah joined the royal family "I felt terribly insecure. I thought maybe I ought to be like Fergie, and my husband said "I wish you be would like Fergie - all jolly. Why are you always so miserable?. . . I made so many ball-ups trying to be like Fergie. ..That summer at Ascot I put a brolly up someone's backside. Slapped hands... I learnt a lot." (Diana, Her True Story, page58) In response to the criticism, Diana ceased the hijinks with Fergie and began to distance herself from Sarah.

Diana wore this suit repeatedly from 1987 through 1989. Besides Ascot in 1987, she wore it in July to both day engagements in Ely and also to a friend's wedding. In 1988 she wore it on the Australian tour, where in Melbourne she showed off her piano skills (right) and was pronounced by the music professor "very, very talented". In 1989 she wore it in March on the Wales' Gulf tour, and later that summer to a garden party at Buckingham Palace. According to Georgina Howells in her book "Diana Her Life in Fashion", after Diana's death this suit was found in a storage wardrobe at Kensington Palace along with many other long-unworn outfits.