Magic in the Daylight

(7 of 11)

Taking careful note of all the duplication and trend setting, a Major Ralph Rochester of Malt Field, Devon, dispatched a letter to the Times of London. "Sir," he wrote, "I have observed of late numerous girls who are taking pains to look like Lady Diana; but of the boys I have observed, none is making the least effort to look like the Prince of Wales. How should this be?" One reason may be that the Prince steers clear of trends. His suits are made by Johns & Pegg, Ltd., exclusively military tailors until World War II, which made the naval ceremonial day coat in which the Prince will approach the altar. "We keep up with fashion, but we don't lead fashion," says Peter Johns.

Charles' shirts come from the top-drawer Turnbull & Asser; the palace thriftily returns them now and again to have the collars replaced.

If the Prince has picked up a little pizazz by association with Lady Diana, she has assumed the beginnings of a royal aspect. Even though she chose to have "obey" deleted from the marriage service, she has not yet dealt successfully with the problem of monarchical chapeaux. Women of the royal family are all encouraged and expected to wear hats for formal occasions. Lady Diana's early efforts to comply with this code have resulted in a couple of wowzers, including one that looked as if the mother ship from Close Encounters of the Third Kind had made a forced landing on her noggin. Under such circumstances, photos sometimes catch fleeting moments when a kind of uncertainty, even a suggestion of strain, seems to flicker across her face. Royals do have a peculiar knack for looking out of it, and when Charles drove off from Ascot in his dark blue Aston Martin with Diana at his side, both had the slightly dazed look of a couple who had just scored big on Let's Make a Deal.

It is in the realm of gifts, indeed, where the royal wedding began to look less like a wide-screen spectacular and more like the world's most deluxe television quiz show. Without undue straining, the voice of a master of ceremonies comes filtering through the imagination, asking the traditional question—"Johnny, tell us what's in the jackpot for this wonderful couple"—and getting, from an agitated announcer who sounds like a tobacco auctioneer just graduated from broadcast school, a far from conventional reply:

"Bob, we've got presents, I'm telling you, from the four corners of the world!