LONDON — On Sept. 9, one day after Queen Elizabeth II died, a Twitter user posted an image of a McDonald's touch-to-order screen, the fast food restaurant's usual interface replaced with a somber black-and-white headshot of the queen.
Beneath the golden arches logo, text read: "HER MAJESTY QUEEN ELIZABETH II 1926-2022."
The photo on Twitter turned out to be fake, but the social media post went viral because it was the perfect parody of the black-and-white headshots of the queen that have become ubiquitous in the U.K. It amassed over 30,000 likes, with commenters using it to chat about the most unexpected places they had seen Queen Elizabeth's face. One person saw her on a similar touchscreen at their local co-op. Another said he saw her on bus tickets in Oxford.
Other fast-food restaurants displayed tributes. A KFC near Piccadilly Circus in London displayed a message on LED screens that would have otherwise displayed ads for chicken: "We are deeply saddened by the passing of Her Majesty the Queen, and our thoughts are with the Royal Family. Our restaurant will be closed during the State Funeral as we mourn Her Majesty's passing."
In England's capital city, tributes to the queen are everywhere — on the streets, in apartment windows and even on buttons worn by passers-by.
But some of the most reliable public displays of mourning come from places of commerce, where ads have been swapped out for somber memorializing. Some people appreciate the nods to the late queen during the U.K.'s nationwide period of mourning. Others find them more performative than sincere.
Either way, her face is inescapable.
Storefronts big and small
At Knightsbridge, a chic shopping destination just south of Hyde Park, the flagship Harvey Nichols department store takes up nearly the entirety of a city block.
It's catered to shoppers here since 1831, when founder Benjamin Harvey began selling linens at the location. Since then, it has become one of the city's most iconic stores, its seven floors packed with designer brands, restaurants and salons.
The size of the place makes the tribute there all the more striking. In lieu of window displays, the length of the store is postered with black-and-white portraits of the late queen. And as a famously patriotic business, the store went further than most — it closed for a day of mourning, just after the queen's passing.
Nearby Burberry, the British high-fashion brand, announced it would cancel its upcoming London fashion show as "a mark of respect."
The larger the store (or company) the larger the tribute, it seemed. At a Louis Vuitton shop, a large window decal said the queen's "constant and strong sense of duty will remain an inspiration throughout the world." Behind the decal was a massive bouquet of white flowers, nearly a meter wide.
In the neighboring Belgravia neighborhood, independent shops had simpler displays, but displays nonetheless. A small stationery store placed a framed 4x6-inch headshot in its window. A shop employee said orders to set out the photo came from its parent company, which owns all the shops on the same block.
Some tributes are so visually impressive that they've become tourist attractions. Piccadilly Circus is a plaza in Central London that has a Times Square feel, frequented by tourists and surrounded on all sides by gift shops. But this week, the bright LED screens that normally show ads showed portraits instead.
It was such a memorable image that foot traffic out of the Underground station was clogged, as visitors stopped to take photos of the queen's face overlooking one of the city's most famous squares.
Virtual mourning
You don't have to leave your house to come across the tributes.
The social media for Harrods, an iconic London department store, was one of the first stores to share a post about the queen, saying, "We stand with the entire nation in grief on the passing of Her Majesty." (Harrods, as well as Harvey Nicols, will be closed on Sept. 19, the day of the queen's funeral.)
Some were more creative. The Zirndorf, Germany-based toy company Playmobil posted a black-and-white rendering of the queen as a plastic-hat-wearing Playmobil-style toy. Some liked it, and others found it disrespectful. "Wow. Just ... wow," went one reply. "You should probably delete this."
Corporate stunts like this are the ones that start to raise peoples' eyebrows, and the Twitter account @GrieveWatch has been aggregating and retweeting the most audacious to over 28,000 users' cringing delight. (And likely more than that soon — the follower count ticked up by the thousands over the span of Tuesday alone.)
The account's bio reads: "Monitoring, assessing and promoting appropriate displays of patriotic grieving," but it's definitely sardonic — reposting memorials that border on the absurd. One was a food bank announcing its closure in honor of the period of mourning. Another showed Elizabeth's smiling headshot placed awkwardly next to an ad for 7 GBP whiskey bottles. "It's what she would have wanted," read the snarky text.
The person behind the account didn't give their name or location in the U.K. to the Post-Gazette. But they did say they've been following public grieving since long before the queen passed. @GrieveWatch, the person said, is a side project of @PoppyWatch, which documents large displays of the poppies that Brits traditionally put out to honor veterans.
"This kind of performative remembrance by individuals and brands is an annual occurrence here," they said.
A long tradition
Still, there are surprises yet.
At Gordon's, a Thames-side watering hole whose claim to fame is being London's oldest wine bar, Queen Elizabeth's face looked on from newspaper clippings that adorned the walls. Only the newspapers weren't new — they were copies of the Daily Mail from June 3, 1953, the day after her coronation.
When asked if the bar had hung those up after the queen's death, a waiter laughed: "Those have been there for ages."
There may not be black-and-white tributes hanging from Gordon's windows — though maybe that's because they don't have windows, being a wine cellar that's mostly underground. But the bar's website shows they're giving tribute anyway.
Try to look up the bar's menu online, and a pop-up window with a certain black-and-white portrait will block your view. "Gordon's Wine Bar is truly saddened by the passing of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, may she rest in peace," a paragraphlong ode to the queen begins.
And then it ends: "We will remain open as usual, unless instructed otherwise."
