(RED)-hot this season

WASHINGTON -- The color red is always popular during the holidays. But this season, (RED) is even hotter.

The seven-week-old initiative known as (RED), started by rock star Bono and Kennedy family member Bobby Shriver, involves six global manufacturers designing special items mostly in shades of red and marketing them as a fund-raising tool for fighting AIDS globally. Part of the profits go to treatment for patients in Africa.

(RED) -- the parentheses were put in as symbols of people embracing a cause -- has taken off in the United States this holiday season and is expected to raise tens of millions of dollars from Christmas sales, and much more later on.

The effort has become more than just a way to help a cause, growing into a way to buy some of the trendiest stocking stuffers of the year -- and feel good about it.

Buyers have put their names on waiting lists for Motorola's (RED) Motorazr phone. Gap stores repeatedly run out of INSPI(RED) T-shirts. And Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger of California helped deplete the (RED) stocks of one Gap store in Washington, walking out with $6,000 worth of merchandise.

There are also four types of Converse sneakers, Apple's iPod Nano, a range of Giorgio Armani clothes and accessories, and more than a dozen items at the Gap.

"I like the color red -- it goes with my personality," Helena Johnson , a 30-something stock market regulator from Upper Marlboro , Md., who wants to buy the Motorola phone, said yesterday as she left a Gap store. "And the money goes to AIDS in Africa. That brings a lot of people to the table, to know their money can do some good."

Richard Feachem , the executive director of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria , which will receive roughly half of the profits from sales of the (RED) items, said his organization collected $15 million from proceeds earlier this year in sales mainly from England and France. But he expects much more now with the US rollout, which was kicked off in mid-October on the Oprah Winfrey Show.

"The big income rush will come through this Christmas shopping season," he said. "We may be over the $100 million mark by the end of Christmas. I don't know that for sure, but it is my hope and belief that the (RED) campaign will bring in hundreds of millions of dollars in the coming years."

(RED) officials believe such estimates are premature, saying only that the money collected so far in the United States will pay for putting 45,000 AIDS patients on life-extending antiretroviral treatment for a year. Shriver and other campaign organizers will not say how much money they've raised , but a rough analysis of treating 45,000 people in Africa would put the cost at $1,000 a patient, or an estimated $45 million.

"What I hope to do in the first two years is build the brand, so when people see the embrace logo, they will know what it means," Shriver said in an interview yesterday. "The money will follow. The point to make now is that it's catching on. The Gap sold out the T-shirts and had to send airplanes down to Lesotho to get more, and there's rejoicing down in the Lesotho factory."

Much of the Gap's (RED) products are made in Lesotho, a tiny southern African country where roughly one in four adults are infected with the virus that causes AIDS, one of the highest HIV rates in the world.

Last week, at an AIDS conference organized by the influential Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, Calif., Feachem had an audience of 2,000 mostly evangelical Christians roaring as he pulled out one (RED) product after another on a giant stage.

Feachem showed off his Giorgio Armani watch and wallet; pulled out his (RED) iPod and American Express (RED) card (available only in the United Kingdom); and then, with a nod to Rick Warren, the founder of Saddleback and author of the best-selling book, "The Purpose Driven Life," said, "This should be a Christmas of purpose-driven shopping."

The audience cheered loudly, some shouting, "Red, red!"

The five-year-old Global Fund has committed $6.8 billion in 136 countries to fight AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria. The US, European, and Japanese governments, along with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, are the largest donors. But an initial hope that corporations would contribute significantly has never materialized, to the disappointment of many. Before the (RED) campaign, the fund had received just $5 million in private donations, an average of $1 million a year.

But the (RED) campaign -- symbolized in Boston by the giant billboard near Fenway Park off the Mass. Pike -- has brought new optimism.

"We think it's a very American idea because of its immediacy and its size, and it goes right to the heart of a problem," said Tamsin Smith , president of the (RED) campaign. "It's kind of a John Wayne concept."

And perhaps a Schwarzenegger one as well.

On the day after Thanksgiving, the star of the Terminator movies shopped at a Gap store in downtown Washington and purchased bagfuls of (RED) clothing and accessories, according to store personnel.

"He came in here on Black Friday and bought $6,000 worth of stuff," Andrea Wills , 36, a cash register supervisor, said, standing amid the $28 INSPI(RED) T-shirts, $198 cashmere (RED) sweaters, and a $350 (RED) leather jacket.

At a nearby Sprint store, more than 20 people put their names on a waiting list for the slim, red Motorazr phone .

"Most people buy it because it's cool-looking," said salesman Fred Neequaye , 21, who moved 10 years ago with his family from Ghana to Washington . "But they also know it's for a good cause. Before they come in, everyone seems to know about (RED)."

John Donnelly can be reached at donnelly@globe.com.