British Royalty In New York City Met With Wadlerian Yawn

We’ve come a long way since revolutionaries melted down a statue of King George III and used the scrap for bullets — evidenced by one-time Boldface Names Captain Joyce Wadler cutting to the chase on the topic Charles and Camilla’s royal visit to the city:

But since this is, after all, a marketing tour for Britain, the big question remains: How is the 58-year-old duchess, who has been viewed as an ungainly frump throughout her long liaison with the prince, looking these days?

This was a hard question to determine, for those in the small, undemonstrative crowd at Photo Op No. 1, the World Trade Center, had to squint through a chain link fence to try to see the duchess, who was outfitted as conspicuously as possible in a brilliant fuchsia suit with a matching velvet collar. She had several strings of pearls around her neck, carried a black rectangular clutch bag and – this is most important – wore black stilettos, a sign, when worn by a middle-aged woman, that she is really, really trying.