This week the Prince of Wales embarked on his first tour of the US in two decades: Ground Zero, the White House, then a selection of organic farms in California. A lot can happen in 20 years and not just to the Royal Family. Bush Mark II is in the White House and glamour is out. Would the blonde and glitzy ingénue who caused a sensation in America in the 1980s have pulled it off in 2005? Unlikely. Sartorially, Diana styled herself as an icon; it’s doubtful she could have managed down-at-home. Down-at-home is Camilla in spades.

Charles’s stated aim is to give British tourism a boost, but the Americans are confused. A Georgetown University student has been quoted all over the papers saying: “How is an old guy with jug ears and his horse-faced wife supposed to get us flocking back to England?” In the vernacular of American Dianaphiles, Charles is still called the “tampon” — an improvement on 20 years ago, when Diana stole his thunder by waltzing with the Scientologist John Travolta and nobody referred to Charles at all. In the weeks and months leading up to this year’s tour the Diana Circle, a group committed to preserving her memory, gave warning, not very ominously: “We are mounting various campaigns regarding those two losers.”

What these people have failed to observe is that Camilla no longer looks remotely like a loser, and was never a convincing horse. Something happened to her shortly before her wedding along the lines of a sartorial epiphany (perhaps even a stylist). She discovered the fashion label Robinson Valentine — which made her wedding dress and has decked her out with outfits for the current tour — and she started wearing Philip Treacy hats, successfully.

Besides this, she’s done something with her hair; chucked out the ill-fitting lilac box-jackets, the hallmark of every middle-aged Sloane; and is now being fawned over by designers after she was credited with having resuscitated Burberry with an offhand remark about how much she liked the clothes. Camilla was once voted the eighth worst-dressed woman in Britain, now poor Julian MacDonald boasts that he makes her tights. Somebody has even bothered to coin the phrase “Camilla chic”. And the woman has spirit and humour and a nice line in obscene jokes, but not very much religion.

Will she fall out with Laura? The Americans should be on tenterhooks. Will Camilla, in her crimson Roy Allen suit, be the first Royal to sneak a crafty fag out of a White House window?

Read another view: the Duchess of Cornwall - 'Frump Towers'

Times recommends

• 12 party beauty tips
• Nutrition: is being big a genetic destiny?
• What it feels like: to pry into other people's lives