Fashion designer Catherine Walker dies at 65

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Fashion designer Catherine Walker, whose work was championed by late Princess Diana, has died after suffering from breast cancer, her family said Sunday. She was 65.

Walker is best known for creating some of Diana’s most famous outfits. The princess was buried in a black dress created by Walker.

The designer studied philosophy at the universities of Lille and Aix-en Province in her native France, before she moved to London where she married lawyer John Walker.

After her husband died in 1975, Walker was left to raise their two daughters.

‘Catherine Walker overcame young widowhood and fought cancer twice with enduring bravery,’ her family said in a statement Sunday. ‘She built one of the most successful British couture brands and at the same time raised a loving family.’

The family said their mother had ‘dressed many of the world’s most beautiful women,’ since she first sold garments in 1976, offering her designs from a basket as she walked up and down the Kings Road shopping district in London’s Chelsea neighborhood.

Walker eschewed fashion traditions, never showing her clothes in catwalk shows and usually shunning the limelight, but was named couture designer of the year at the 1990 British Fashion Awards.

-- Associated Press