Nine Instagram tiles. One ‘T-shirt you should have thrown away, but you wear it as a pajama top instead’ colored background. Four words in gilt italics. American. Riviera. Orchard. Montecito. What do they mean? It’s a mystery. But that’s how Meghan, Duchess of Sussex launched her new lifestyle brand on Thursday, which, as you’ve gathered by now, is called American Riviera Orchard and is based in Montecito, where she has lived with her husband Prince Harry and their children. Tots Archie and Lilibet since 2020.
And what a lifestyle brand it promises to be. American Riviera Orchard’s trademark application covers everything from cookbooks to linens, stationery to yoga sets, birdseed to table card holders, “not of precious metal.” (Disappointing news for the precious-metal-table-place-card-holder fans among us.) There’s talk of a connected Netflix cooking show. There are rumors of a real store. There might be a whole bunch of jams on the way. (Energy by Delia Smith, I like it.) And of course there is a website. Will it be a home for content? Not confirmed. But what’s a lifestyle brand without sweet, sweet, search engine-optimized articles designed to trap consumers in a parasocial relationship with the founder? That’s not a rhetorical question. The answer is an online store. And Sussex is way too posh to just run an online store. The content comes.
Of course, Sussex is no noob when it comes to content. From 2014 to 2017, she was in the mines with writers like me, producing articles about her Eat pray love month in Italy, the best way to have sustainable holidays and how to improve your pilates workout with just two paper plates – all on her blog The Tiga self-proclaimed ‘hub for the discerning palate – those with an appetite for food, travel, fashion and beauty.’
The Tig closed in 2017 because you know why: Meghan was getting married to Harry and I speculated that the Queen wasn’t entirely convinced that her Hundreds would be improved with disposable tableware. (All that’s left The Tig domain is now a farewell message ending with “never forget your worth,” which seems very relevant these days considering everything that’s happened in the House of Windsor since then.) Luckily, there are enough deleted articles floating around the Internet that we can get an idea of what you’re capable of expect from Sussex’s new project.
