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Has it really been more than 300 days since the Duchess of Sussex launched her deathless As Ever brand? It seems like yesterday. It seems like a thousand years ago.
It seems like a good idea. It seems like the worst thing to hit the shelves since Fergie put her name to a range of diet pudding teas back in 2014. Was there a Ginger Sponge flavour? Just wondering.
My point is Meghan is not the first to leverage her royal position for commercial gain and it is unlikely she will be the last. And you can’t blame her!
In a world where A-list entrepreneurs and celebrity-owned brands are raking in billions, the temptation to use the cachet of a gilt-edged royal connection must be irresistible.
Global interest in the House of Windsor provides a harvestable crop of consumers who are already interested in whatever you are selling. Even if it is only a jar of overpriced, factory-made As Ever raspberry spread in ‘keepsake’ cardboard packaging, yours for ten quid.
I felt this frisson for myself in November at the As Ever pop-up in the Godmothers store in Summerland, California. There in that swanky bookshop, just ten minutes along the coast from the Sussexes’ Montecito home, browsing shoppers were genuinely excited to see the As Ever range, which is usually only available online.
‘Oh look, it’s Meghan’s stuff,’ they cried, crowding around the jam and marmalade gift sets, the scented candles, herb teas and tins of flower sprinkles arrayed across wooden tables on the first floor.
Meghan Markle on her Instagram page in July last year
A picture from Meghan’s Netflix show With Love, Meghan
The goods were stylishly packaged with gold velvet ribbons and displayed on silver salvers; it was all very Downton Abbey meets Soho House. Yet the only person who was actually buying anything was me – and even I was confused.
For what is As Ever all about? Even nine months down the line it remains difficult to grasp the brand’s identity or purpose – or even its future.
Following a few misfires and a troubled launch dogged with copyright issues, one even struggles to see what the As Ever products have in common – except perhaps that they are all relatively cheap to produce and are the kind of items usually found on the twee shelves of a tourist gifte shoppe.
Jams, marmalade, teabags, candles, honey, chocolate, flower sprinkles, pancake and shortbread mixes, wines and chocolate? ‘More coming soon,’ it says on the website, and it sounds more like a threat than a promise.
Initially, As Ever trumpeted the fact that most of their products sold out instantly, but there was no detail on volume.
Did Meghan sell 200 bottles of her Californian rosé during its July launch, or 200,000? Details came there none, but in 2024 online shopping accounted for just 16 per cent of retail revenue in the US (according to Capital One Shopping Research), with the bulk of purchases in America continuing to happen in stores.
In addition, tariffs and inflation have made American consumers more cautious and price-sensitive this year, making it unlikely to increase demand for, say, a ‘limited edition’ £22 jar of As Ever wildflower honey.
A candle which is one of the items available from Meghan’s As Ever brand for a whopping $64
The Sage Honey with Honeycomb from As Ever, at $32
At the start of the festive season As Ever customers were being offered free shipping and a free jar of marmalade (worth £6.70) with every order. Seasonal goodwill, market jitters or just cold reality setting in as the initial novelty of the range has worn off? Who can truly say? Only Meghan, and she is not telling.
All I can venture is that I’ve tried the jams (runny), sniffed and burned the weird candles (top notes of compost), got the annoying flower sprinkles stuck in my teeth, sampled the wines (urk), drunk the tea (nothing special) and I wouldn’t rush back to buy any of it again. Yet the brand has had the incredible and unique boost of two Netflix TV series of With Love, Meghan plus a recent Christmas special to turbo-charge sales.
However, the Duchess wandering around in her luscious designer casuals and serious jewellery in full oh-come-let-us-adore-her mode was a hard watch.
Bad enough that she was calling upon viewers to embrace old traditions, make new ones and ‘elevate’ every experience by spooning chilli crisp into a tub of store-bought tahini while making an edible wreath of broccoli spears.
Worse was the prospect of taking entertaining and hospitality advice from a woman who is estranged from her husband’s family, alienated from most of her own family and who did not visit her father in hospital after he recently had a leg amputated.
The Duchess has her own reasons for this sad separation from Thomas Markle, but it does make the As Ever brand’s core message of ‘thoughtful, small moments’ and ‘elevated gestures of care’ sound hollow, even laughable.
Much has changed in the social media landscape and elsewhere since Meghan launched her Tig lifestyle blog back in 2014, when she was still an actress on Suits.
Audiences now want authentic, unfiltered realistic content, not hypocrisy from an anti-royal rebel who fled the tyranny of inherited wealth and privilege only to use this legacy to further her brand at every opportunity.
At the Godmothers store the As Ever centrepiece was a large, wooden wine box with the following words boldly etched on to the front: ‘Thoughtfully Curated by Meghan, Duchess of Sussex.’
For much of last year the As Ever digital marketing team has been pushing the brand online with soft jazz music, sunshine scenarios and the willing help of influencers, friends and freebie chasers.
All propound the core, M&S adjacent message that this is not just ordinary jam, this is Meghan Markle jam. And along with its humdrum sister products, it is all you need to elevate your very being via the medium of drizzling and sprinkling.
To this end there are many images of As Ever pancakes jazzed up with a drizzle of honey, a spatter of jam or a sprinkle of flower petals – or sometimes all three.
‘Looks like a bug zapper was emptied on top,’ noted one disobliging poster, with deadly accuracy. And some of the culinary suggestions the As Ever team and their acolytes produce border on the desperate.
Use As Ever raspberry jam in a martini was one Instagram idea. Make a vinaigrette with As Ever marmalade was another. Put a spoonful of the marmalade into your As Ever sparkling wine to make a mimosa, they insisted. At £68 a bottle? I don’t think so.
Meanwhile, the hero-product flower sprinkles are scattered everywhere. They fall upon an innocent cheeseboard and upon chocolate cupcakes.
A chocolate bar – adorned with Meghan’s favourite decoration, flowers – another product from As Ever
They are thickly drifted upon apricot toasts, upon the little spears of asparagus, upon all the living and all the dead, upon every part of the whole Meghan universe.
Obliging influencers are hauled in to do their worst. ‘It’s a flower sprinkles in my latte kind of morning,’ posts someone called Christine, who describes herself as a ‘designer and creative human’.
Here comes Elise Loehnen, who used to be the No 2 at Goop before she fell out with Gwyneth Paltrow and now hosts a weekly podcast with ‘luminaries and spiritual elders’.
Next to a picture of the As Ever shortbread mix she writes: ‘I’m always thrilled about a baking shortcut.’ A fan called Tiffers seems pleased to be ‘adding magic to my muffins with As Ever flower sprinkles’.
On and on it goes in this netherworld of nothingness, this supposed elevation of the ordinary into the extraordinary. Of course, it is early days for As Ever and teething problems come with any brand. Yet there can be no denying the lack of clear identity and audience connection, no matter how many flowers Meghan sprinkles on top.
Look at the established players in the celebrity brand market; big guns such as Paltrow herself with her Goop label, George Clooney, the Kardashians, Jessica Alba, Rihanna and Beyonce. All their brands have a distinctiveness built on deep celebrity and a strong bond with their audience.
And coming up fast in the outside lane is Jennifer Aniston with her LolaVie hair care range; Drew Barrymore with Beautiful, her kitchenware and lifestyle brand; Cameron Diaz with her low-alcohol Avaline wine; plus successful Selena Gomez and Lady Gaga with their top selling cosmetics ranges.
Meanwhile, British actor Tom Holland has had a hit in the US with Bero, his non-alcoholic beer, and even Shakira’s tips don’t lie – she rolled out her new Isima hair care line in July.
Meghan has a long way to go and many, many flowers to sprinkle before she can hope to emulate even a fraction of this kind of success. Who knows what 2026 holds for As Ever, but it seems unlikely that she can rely on another Netflix series to help the brand. There is only so much the public can take.
And there were just too many complaints about a show that turned out to be a fiesta of fakery without a shred of cred, made in a fiction of a kitchen that wasn’t hers, filmed with best friends she had only just met, featuring recipes that were not original.
It may have been thoughtfully curated by the Duchess of Sussex, but can As Ever last for ever? Or even until next Christmas?
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