Royal Jelly

Let’s start with the jam. Have we really had four years of mud-throwing and rage because Meghan Markle wants to make jam? And also marmalade and edible oils and vegetable-based spreads? Let’s move on to the name of her embryonic lifestyle brand, American Riviera Orchard, three random words in search of a meaning. I live in fear that after telling us about the Greek origins of Archewell, someone will pop up now to tell us that ARO is the Greek word for crystal healing or kindness.

Four years since Megxit, Megs wants to become the new Gwyneth Paltrow, even though the real Gwyneth Paltrow is alive and kicking, cleaning up in the lifestyle blog/website department and, in fact, living just up the road from H&M in the house that Goop built: a magnificent architect-designed temple to space and light, with a bathroom aligned for its view of the setting sun.

ARO was launched with a mercifully short video of flowers, shots of Meghan stirring something in a kitchen and an invitation to join a waiting list for who knows what. Long before that, she had form on the Instagram lifestyle brand shtick. When she was a jobbing actress she had a lifestyle/wellness/food blog, The Tig, named after what is supposedly her favorite wine, tignanello. The Tig accrued three million followers on Instagram, but it isn’t easy to monetize a lifestyle/wellness blog when you’re a jobbing actress and not, to pluck a name from the air, Gwyneth Paltrow, and she closed it down when she met Prince Harry. Now married to Prince Harry, Megs is happily in a position to return to those roots and monetize them, without the jobbing actress bit, or being sixth on the Suits call sheet. Recently she was introduced at the SXSW festival as a “visionary female leader”, so it must be true.

And so to ARO. An “insider”, who is definitely not Meghan because she despises all tabloids, told Page Six, a tabloid, that she’s been working on this project for more than a year and “it’s all the things that are closest to her heart”. According to the trademark application this includes tablecloths, napkins, cutlery and dairy-based spreads. There is also talk of cookery books and cookery TV programs. I note in passing that in her engagement interview, she and Harry laughed that when he proposed she was “trying” to roast a chicken, and this may not bode well.

The idea is clearly to cook up Megs as one part Goop and one part Martha Stewart. There’s going to be a liberal sprinkling of Aerin Lauder’s billion-dollar lifestyle brand, which sells everything from fragrance to wall lights to customers seduced by her name and her enviable lifestyle. Finally, the focus groups in Montecito stirred in a bloody great dollop of “do you know who I am”, hence the royal-lite coat of arms-style logo with the suggestion of a crown on top, the “classy” calligraphy, the ever-present reminder that we are in the presence of Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex, and a motif on either side which looks unfortunately like a pair of slightly saggy breasts. And look at her video! In yonder artfully lit corridor can that truly be her, posing in a ballgown fit for a princess? The question is, do people want to buy what she sells?

ARO was launched with a mercifully short video of flowers, shots of Meghan stirring something in a kitchen.

Do they care? Will ARO fill the parts that Goop cannot reach? How many fans does Megs have and will they be able to afford to fund her 16 bathrooms and private jet habit? Let us consider the situation with the seriousness it requires.

Goop vs. AMERICAN RIVIERA ORCHARD

Hilary Rose is a longtime columnist and features writer at The Times of London