The Prince of Wales is no Bonny Prince Charlie, clothes-wise at least, according to Fashion Consultant Karl Dallas of Britain's influential Tailor & Cutter. Prince Charles, writes Dallas in the current issue, "follows the cult of shabbiness." For instance: the prince has taken to the fashionably wider tie without realizing that it is out of proportion to the narrow lapels and boxy shape of his '50s-style jacket. "As for his trousers, at the bottom they are the slim shape that every young man was demanding a decade ago, but at the top theyare as baggy as an old man's--inelegant at both ends." Dallas admits, however, that perhaps the prince is consciously trying to "adjust to the day of the common man." A deliberately disarranged pocket flap may, he thinks, be a "secret signal that, from the top, elegance is seen to be undemocratic." However awful Charles' clothes are, concedes Cutter Dallas, he "usually avoids the depths" of Foreign Secretary Alec Douglas-Home and President Richard Nixon.

In his book Of a Fire on the Moon, ostensibly about the Apollo 11 moon shot, Norman Mailer was really writing about Wasps (White Anglo-Saxon Protestants). Or so he indicated during an interview with Leticia Kent, published in the current Vogue. Hymenopterist Mailer, who has called Wasps "the most Faustian, barbaric, draconian, progress-oriented and root-destroying people on earth," has moved on to "some mysterious and half-spooky conclusions," notably that "the real mission of the Wasp in history was not, say, to create capitalism, or to disseminate Christianity into backward countries." It was to get the U.S. to the moon.

"The mind of the Wasp bears more resemblance to the laser than the mind of any other ethnic group," said Mailer. "To wit, he can project himself 'extraordinary distances through a narrow path. He's disciplined, stoical, able to become the instrument of his own will, has extraordinary boldness and daring together with a resolute lack of imagination. He's profoundly nihilistic. And this nihilism found its perfect expression in the odyssey to the moon--because we went there without knowing why we went."

Capitalist ways and wiles were almost too much for Ballerina Natalia Makarova, who defected from Russia's Kirov Ballet in England last fall, then moved to the U.S. Returning from a visit with friends, she and her good friend and interpreter Vladimir Rodzianko found that the locks had been changed on their Manhattan apartment: Landlady Irene Epstein claimed that Natalia and Vladimir owed telephone and electricity bills and had done $1,000 worth of damage. Chort vozmi! Natalia's costumes and specially made ballet shoes were inside, and she was about to go on tour with the American Ballet Theater. To the rescue flew the Ballet Theater Foundation with a lawsuit, and State Supreme Court Judge George Carney with a court order. "She can break down the door if necessary," he said. She didn't have to. A pas de quatre with a happy ending for the heroine.

Lord Snowdon arrived without her a fortnight ago, but Britain's Princess Margaret finally flew in (tourist class) to join him in Barbados last week. She greeted him at the airport--her eyes closed (emotion? glare?)--and it looked as though they could count on some good warm weather for a while at the pretty beach house of Tony's uncle, Designer Oliver Messel.

America's great literary curmudgeon-iconoclast, H.L. Mencken, has been heard from once more--in a collection of some 30,000 letters he received and wrote. They were made available last week by the New York Public Library 15 years after his death--just as Mencken had stipulated. His correspondents included almost every major American molder of opinion from World War I through World War II. Wrote Novelist Theodore Dreiser in 1911, after his first book, Sister Carrie, scored a success: "I expect to try out this book game for about four or five books after which unless I am enjoying a good income from them I will quit." From Lawyer Clarence Darrow in 1924, enclosing his piece on Prohibition for the American Mercury, which Mencken edited: "I purposely wanted to make this dull and stupid so that I might deceive some yokels into believing that it is judicial and fair."

Mencken to Darrow in reply to congratulations on his wedding: "All I ask is your prayers. Get on your knees and let the Holy Spirit feel the full horsepower of your eloquence." To Author James Thurber: "I can hardly imagine an inhabitant of the great open spaces not knowing a drink called Angel's Teat. It is universally admired and respected in these swamps ... I hope you drop off in Baltimore some day and let me show you the ruins of a once great medieval city." As Mencken lay dying in 1955, Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter wrote him for his 75th birthday "to tell you what permanent memories of gay and exhilarating hours of friendship you have deposited with me. You have replenished life for me, by confirming my zest for it and adding yours. I hail thee!"

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