Summer fades and even in sunny California, autumn is coming in fast. In the orchards and vineyards around Montecito, the leaves are crisping, the nights are colder and the far-flung fields where the Duchess of Sussex harvested the doomed blooms to make her edible flower sprinkles lie empty; every last violet violated, all petals kettled, not a nasturtium left standing.
One imagines this is exactly how the Royal Family felt in the scalding aftermath of Megxit – but please, we have all moved on since then, haven’t we? Some of us more than others.
Meghan describes her little tins of flower sprinkles, which she sells on her As Ever lifestyle site at £11 for a 5g tin, as a way to create ‘tiny moments of joy’ and add a ‘little bit of magic’ in everyday life. So go on, peasants. Elevate your scrambled eggs from ‘mundane to magical’ the Meghan way.
She calls her sprinkles ‘confetti for your plating’ and I am not hating on her for that, even though it is obviously ridiculous.
Meghan believes every fry-up could do with a glow-up, and what fledging lifestyle brand could survive without a sprinkling of stardust on its cowpat of tat? Preferably royal stardust, if there is any going spare – and how much for a tin of that? As the Duchess has learned to her personal enrichment, it’s a price beyond rubies.
Without those gilded connections that stretch thousands of miles from Montecito to downtown Windsor and back again, would it have been quite such a hot girl summer for As Ever?
Meghan’s brand finally launched in April after a year of misfires, hasty unveilings, relaunches, renaming, legal problems and jam-based pickles. And now, after six months in business alongside two Netflix TV series of With Love, Meghan to help her subtly promote the goods and her good self, we have at last glimpsed the extent of her commercial ambition and depth of her dreams.
In short, we finally have the measure of Meghan being her authentic self, sans tights and free of the pesky restrictions of her former royal life. ‘I am using this as a platform to share joy,’ she said recently. ‘To share more of myself, to share tips in my life and have fun.’
We finally have the measure of Meghan being her authentic self, sans tights and free of the pesky restrictions of her former royal life, says Jan Moir
As Ever – which launched in April – has around ten products in its range, including a $28 limited-edition orange blossom honey
Yet the more we see of As Ever the more baffling this brand becomes.
What is it all about, I ask myself? Who is it really for? Even at this early stage it boasts an unusually insubstantial product range; a selection of non-essential comestibles floating about in cyberspace in search of purpose.
The flower sprinkles are a cute if wearying idea – I’m just being polite, I hate them – but As Ever is essentially all froth and garnish, humdrum teatime products tarted up in luxury packaging with labels featuring the Duchess’s oddly menacing calligraphy.
There are now around ten items in the range, including a 14.5 per cent-proof rosé wine, a crepe mix, a shortbread mix, the aforementioned sprinkles, three types of teas, raspberry jam and the newest addition – please contain your excitement – a jar of marmalade. Or ‘our newest signature fruit spread’, as Meghan likes to call it.
Who buys this stuff? The Duchess described her demographic as perhaps people who ‘aspired’ to her lifestyle, admirers who want a piece of her. ‘So the pricing is key,’ she said and went on to reminisce with one interviewer about being a poor child growing up in Los Angeles – oh God, here we go again – who worked in a yoghurt shop and had to save for treats. She imagines a core As Ever customer being ‘a 15-year-old girl who can afford the hero product raspberry jam at nine dollars and maybe use the empty jar afterwards for a candle or for the pencils in her desk’. Oh, a lovely jam jar! For my pencils! Lawks-a-mercy, thank you kind lady for your munificence, any chance of a sixpence for me scurvy?
What on earth is it that impels Meghan to believe that admiring teenage girls want to express their devotion to her through the purchase of raspberry jam? Narcissism, delusion or rock-solid marketing research? She must have her reasons, even if she is not exactly Taylor Swift.
Still, it is interesting that in the last few days she has quietly dropped her ShopMy page, an online store where fans could emulate her personal style by purchasing the same ‘hand-picked’ clothes that she wears. Perhaps this is because the starstruck girl who can just about afford the jam cannot necessarily also afford Meghan’s favourite £600 Saint Laurent sandals.
Such a scattergun approach to business – podcast series come and go, initiatives are launched then never heard of again – suggests either the Duchess has not been given quality guidance or fails to heed the expert advice of others. Netflix is her partner and investor in both her TV show and brand, but she is firmly in charge.
‘It is my baby. All creative decisions end up with me,’ she has said. So she has her own team, and she has the last word, but is that a good or bad thing? Once upon a time the Duchess of Sussex was a woman who wanted to change the world for the better.
She still does, but now the focus seems to be on something far more prosaic – capitalising on her fame-by-marriage to influence consumer behaviour.
Once upon a time the Duchess of Sussex was a woman who wanted to change the world for the better. She still does, but now the focus seems to be capitalising on her fame-by-marriage
When she launched her ‘thoughtful’ Napa Valley Rose wine in July it sold out in 44 minutes flat – but what does that really mean?
Is Meghan seriously suggesting that she supplies the recipe and techniques for the mass manufacture of her jams and then teaches everyone in the factory what to do?
No, she doesn’t want a bricks and mortar shop, yes she is considering partnering with retailers in the future and is not ruling out expanding into fashion and beauty. Is the ultimate plan to go global? ‘Yes, absolutely,’ she recently told business journalist Emily Chang on the Bloomberg Originals channel. The Duchess declined to share sales figures for As Ever – no, not even with Bloomberg – but it is no secret that most of the inventory sells out immediately.
When she launched her ‘thoughtful’ Napa Valley Rose wine in July it sold out in 44 minutes flat – but what does that really mean? Was it 2,000 bottles at £22 each or 200,000 bottles or 20 bottles? Meghan just isn’t saying.
There was a telling moment in her interview with Chang when the Emmy-winning presenter asked how long it took to develop each As Ever product. What was that process like? Meghan used the example of a cobbler – an American dessert rather like a crumble – to explain.
‘Huh, goodness,’ she began. ‘I’m exasperated in some ways by that only because it is such a tedious proposition to scale your own home recipe to something at mass and maintain the same – not just quality – but the same flavour that you are able to do at home.’
‘Any home cook would say that if you ask: “Can you make your cobbler that I love?” Great, of course I can make my cobbler. “Great, can you make a million cobblers? Can you teach someone to make a million cobblers that taste just like the one you have at home?”’
Can I just say something? What cobblers.
As Ever likes to promulgate the fantasy that Meghan’s jam is produced in her own Montecito kitchen after the Duchess has tipped trugloads of her homegrown berries into a bubbling pot while soft jazz plays in the background. In reality it is made at a factory in Illinois by a company called The Republic of Tea.
The Duchess believes passionately in her brand and what she sees as her own authenticity, but not everyone agrees
This second act in the life of the former Meghan Markle – or is it her third? – as an entrepreneur who just wants to spread joy and jam has exposed her to scrutiny like never before
As Ever likes to promulgate the fantasy that Meghan’s jam is produced in her own Montecito kitchen after the Duchess has tipped trugloads of her homegrown berries into a bubbling pot, Jan Moir writes
And there is a process in the jam-making business, as there is in any industrial food production. Is Meghan seriously suggesting that she supplies the recipe and techniques for the mass manufacture of her jams and then teaches everyone in the factory what to do? ‘Right, guys. Take two tons of sugar, five million raspberries and whoa, we’re gonna need a bigger boat.’ It just doesn’t work like that.
‘I’m going to get all nerdy and jammy on you,’ she told Chang and then did no such thing – because she didn’t seem to know what she was talking about.
This second act in the life of the former Meghan Markle – or is it her third? – as an entrepreneur who just wants to spread joy and jam has exposed her to scrutiny like never before.
For she has had to get herself out there, and frankly it has been marvellous viewing. I love this version of the Duchess of Sussex; this flirty, flinty, passive-aggressive humanitarian; this narcisstic picker of berries who is quick to prickle and likes to indulge in the kind of nonsense Cali-homilies that must get her mahjong gal pals nodding in agreement around Oprah’s firepit. ‘I think there is a lot of value when you anchor into your own knowing,’ says this sage of the age. ‘I think I finally get to share the me that has been here for so long,’ she opines of self. And then my favourite one of all; ‘The quiet part of the song is still part of the song.’
Hallelujah. If only dear Bach had been around to absorb such wisdom he might have gone on to make a success of his career.
Meanwhile, Meghan has her worries. She worries that the petal-sprinkling public don’t fully appreciate her As Ever efforts.
‘There is a lot of detail in it, there a lot of tiny nuances that I don’t think people would think about.’ She worries other celebrities with lifestyle brands don’t work as hard as her.
‘Are they writing copy and doing these things?’ she wonders. And although she should worry about the new season of With Love, Meghan failing to hit Netflix’s top ten list – in America and globally – she doesn’t. Instead, she consoles herself with the fact that her audience ‘loved’ it, and that’s all that matters.
It is too soon to tell whether As Ever will ever reach the heights of other celebrity lifestyle brands such as Gwyneth Paltrow’s sharply curated Goop; Kylie Minogue’s £34 million wine firm, the butter-churning, tradwife adventures of social media star Hannah Neeleman in Utah or the mighty empire of that great queen of the entertaining scene, Martha Stewart.
Yet it won’t be for want of trying. All summer long the As Ever marketing team have been pushing the brand online with a fervour that suggests a jam-based sugar rush. The official Instagram account ceaselessly shows As Ever products placed by swimming pools, drenched in sunshine, nestled in baskets of orange blossoms.
On-message influencers who post obliging content are rewarded with clammy reposts. ‘The apricot spread took my sliders up a notch and pairs so well with the honey blossom sweet tea,’ wrote one. ‘Sprinkling beauty into my everyday life,’ posted another.
Everyone is trying desperately to elevate these As Ever products into the sublime, but the truth is that they are nothing special and it is hard to see what would encourage repeat custom.
The Duchess believes passionately in her brand and what she sees as her own authenticity, but not everyone agrees.
Many criticised her television series as a fiesta of fakery, made in a kitchen that wasn’t hers, filmed with best friends she had only just met, featuring recipes that were not original and eliciting a confession from Meghan that she doesn’t even like baking very much.
She wants to go global with As Ever, but how much international demand will there be for, say, the new marmalade, which went on sale this week at £6.70 per jar and hasn’t sold out?
On Wednesday the As Ever Insta posted snaps of a Californian sun sinking behind the Pacific Ocean. ‘About last night. When your marmalade matches your sunset. Swoon!’ was the deathless ad slogan underneath.
Marmalade is indeed orange – here is a hint, it is made from oranges, which are orange – but who is swooning? Apart from the little match girls crying with Meghan-joy as they clutch their empty jam jars in the autumn chill.
