People's princess lives on

By Nadia Davids

This month's cover of Fair Lady magazine may come as a bit of a shock.

As customers lined up to pay for their designer hummus at Woolworths, the usual agonising between Marie Claire, Femina and Fair Lady ensued. But this month Fair Lady has a particular and peculiar edge: its cover photograph shows a dead princess, except she looks alive, glowing and ever-so-slightly touched up.

Diana, Princess of Wales, in a burnt sienna matching two-piece, is laughing with abandon, looking as though she is about to set off and do her superwoman thing: breakfast with the stars, save the landmine children in the afternoon, and be home to tuck her sons in at night.

While a more formal black and white portrait might have been a little more appropriate, the laughing colour shot indicates a general global mindset about this woman - that she is not really dead.

Diana seems to generate almost as much publicity and scandal from the grave as she did in the midst of her Panorama interview, and continues to exist in Technicolour in our collective imagination.

The indecisive hovering between magazines in the queue will not last long. Diana on the cover still moves stock.