Rushing for Royal Profits

For collectors of royalabilia, and those who manufacture it, the July 29 wedding is already proving a bonanza. With ingenuity that belies current economic trends, British manufacturers have made it possible to dine on royal wedding place mats, sew with commemorative thimbles and dry royal couple plates with royal couple tea towels, a steal at $3.30. Smokers can light up with Charles and Diana lighters and extinguish butts in C & D ash trays. Tea drinkers can sip from a C & D mug, pour cream from a C & D jug, add sugar with a keepsake teaspoon. Di fans can purchase a copy of her famous decollete dress for $150--one-tenth the price of the original--and store it on a Lady Di hanger. For fun, there is a crossword puzzle with answers that form a princely head. For salvation, there is a Bible, bound in silver imitation leather, and featuring, yes, those innocent, royal faces.

Those faces--stamped, printed and painted on nearly everything--are not, alas, always recognizable. The Guardian sneered that a foreign visitor might suppose "that we were preparing to celebrate the wedding of Miss Bo Derek to the late Count Dracula." Nor do all the portraits meet the palace directive that they be reproduced only on substances of a permanent nature. Wedgwood's basalt bust of Charles fits the bill at $1,700. So does a $1,200 cannon adorned with H.R.H.'s coat of arms. But Charles and Di T shirts are taboo, to the consternation of British manufacturers and the 71 Members of Parliament who have protested that foreigners, unaffected by the ban, are sewing up the market.

Profits from the souvenir trade are expected to top $438 million by July. Insurance companies are also doing a brisk business, agreeing to underwrite more than $33 million in policies covering losses that would result from a change in wedding plans. When the estimated 600,000 to 1 million extra visitors arrive for the event, London's hotels, restaurants and tour organizers will have their day. A group called Corporate Capers has already sold 700 places next to windows in the office buildings along the wedding procession route. For $335, a rubbernecker gets use of binoculars, a TV set for watching the ceremony and a hamper laden with lobster, steak, wedding cake and champagne. Cornishman Simon Adkins has found a more personal way to mark the royal union. Tattooed on his back, in everlasting tribute, are the faces of Charles and Diana framed in a heart, with room left over for their children. Says Adkins: "I can carry my devotion to the royal family with me for the rest of my life."

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