The royals have always been major style influencers - possibly none more so than Princess Diana.

Though today's royals can sell out pieces with a single photo, Diana was a huge figure in the world of high fashion and was close with with some of the biggest names of her day. This week Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour recalled the last time she spoke with the princess. [caption id="attachment_459625" align="alignnone" width="444"] Diana with Ralph Lauren and Anna Wintour.[/caption] They had lunch with former Vanity Fair editor Tina Brown at the Four Seasons in New York City in July 1997. “What I remember from that lunch is how much she spoke about loneliness, how terribly lonely she seemed - and how lovingly she spoke about her boys,” Brown said at the recent Women in the World Summit in New York. Wintour said that Diana also mentioned that the royals didn't know how to handle the press. "What I remember her talking about quite a bit is how the Royal Family - and obviously it’s a different time now, and I think things have completely changed - were not comfortable dealing with the media. "I think that part of her popularity was that Princess Diana really was so good with the media and was so in tune with them and welcomed them rather than standing back. "In a way, she was certainly the first person in the royal family to understand the benefits of that." It's poignant that six weeks later, in August of 1997, Diana died in a car crash in Paris while her car fled from the paparazzi.   The press was widely criticised after the tragedy.