BUSINESS ABROAD: Fit for a Queen

Rarely since her Coronation has Britain’s Queen Elizabeth been photographed without earrings. Thanks to the quickness of English women to copy the Queen, Britain’s jewelers, long pinched by heavy excise tax (now 75%), are enjoying a new flush of prosperity. Sales of London’s Cohn & Rosenberger. Ltd., one of Britain’s largest earring manufacturers, have soared about 400% this year. So widespread is the earring fad that in Birmingham, center of the trade, some factories have fallen nine months behind demand, and one has stopped making everything else to catch up.

At first, stud and hoop earrings were the fashion; now it is pendants. Manufacturers are taking no chances of missing the next turn of fashion, but they are not worried that earrings will ever go out of style. Reason: 30% of Britain’s earring wearers now have pierced ears, v. only 5% two years ago. At that time, Cyril Wilkinson, an ear piercer, appeared on BBC’s most popular television program, What’s My Line? He told of piercing the ears of the Queen Mother, Queen Elizabeth, the Duchesses of Kent and Gloucester. Wilkinson is now piercing ten times as many ears as he did two years ago, which delights the jewelers; women with pierced ears become permanent customers.