Meghan Markle is back with a new blog—sorry, lifestyle brand! —and she’s booked a top stylist to help facilitate her Goopification. After graduating from The Tig—which she shuttered presumably upon the request of The Palace in 2017—and now firmly in her American Riviera Orchard era, the Duchess of Sus𝓈ℯ𝓍 needed to bolster her The Row count pronto. She booked Jamie Mizrahi for the job.
The second client who no doubt had a hand in Markle booking Mizrahi? Jennifer Lawrence, who is a walking advert for Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen’s rarefied wrong shoes, capacious totes and swaddling cashmere (perfect for hiding from the paps in). She is a textbook Upper East Side mom, dashing from Pilates to school pick-up in luxe athleisure wear and trophy coats, but one who has one foot in Hollywood – precisely the MO of Meghan, who despite all pretence of desiring privacy, is putting herself back in the publicity ring with this new venture.
This is the brief we imagine Markle, the entrepreneur—who filed for an American Riviera Orchard Trademark for cookbooks, linen, stationery, yoga kits, bird seed, you get the gist—gave her new celebrity dresser: to curate a wardrobe of clothes that read aspirational, but approachable. Clothes that suggest authenticity. Clothes that make clear every single piece has been pored over. Clothes that aren’t obviously branded. Clothes that people will comment on and remember.
This is what we will get: quiet luxury with a down-to-earth lilt. There will be soft neutral basics in tactile fabrics; impeccable tailoring; a line of flat shoes that suggests she keeps a finger on the fashion pulse, but won’t be swayed by the wider trend cycle (we’d love to see her in Alaïa flats); a roster of handbags that implies she might have been gifted the latest It-bag (Chloé’s bracelet style has her name on it); tougher jewellery (imagine Rosie Huntington-Whiteley and you’re there); and looser denim that is lightyears away from the ripped skinnies Meghan’s image will forever be tied to (sorry Jamie!)
There won’t be drastic changes, but there will be subtle brand shifts. Meghan’s breezy “boyfriend” shirting will stay, but Mizrahi will sneak a couple by The Row in, as well as those failsafes by Markle’s friend Misha Nonoo. There will be less La Ligne, more Louis Vuitton, who Jamie works with closely. Ballet pumps entitled “The Goldfinch” by Birdies won’t pass muster, because Mizrahi will have her eye on everything—including the sweet charm jewellery Meghan has a penchant for and the wide-brimmed hats she deploys as armour against the paparazzi. Hermès, Loro Piana, Toteme and Bottega will receive regular bank transfers. There will be the occasional pop of Loewe, but Markle will still pay lip service to all-American brands—Michael Kors, Ralph Lauren, Tory Burch—to stay in line with her new company ethos. Flashes of everywoman will feature, but American Riviera Orchard sounds expensive and so Meghan must look expensive! Those jams won’t sell themselves.
The reality is that Markle would not have booked a celebrity stylist unless she didn’t think of herself as a celebrity who should wear things worn by other celebrities. Moreover, Mizrahi is a celebrity in fashion circles – a sphere that the ambitious Markle has not really, if we’re being honest, tapped into. Mizrahi holds the keys to a glossy, glittering world that the royal, who laid bare her desire to be accepted by the royal family and the press in Netflix’s Harry & Meghan, surely wants approval from as she forges her own path in the lifestyle space. It all boils down to looking cool and, at the end of the day, don’t we all want that?
