Fashion Meghan

Meghan Sussex’s With Love, Meghan: Holiday Celebration will premiere on Netflix on December 3. Typically, for a show like hers, which is about hosting, the usual promotional strategy would involve the talk show circuit, daytime in particular. There’s always hosting content on daytime – cooking and decorating and crafting, etc – and that’s dialed up even more when you’re approaching the holidays. I worked on a daily daytime talk show for ten years, this is the formula. And so many of our guest bookings through November and December are for segments about gifting and wrapping and feasting etc etc etc. and ideally the experts are there to demonstrate how to make a thing or roast a thing or drizzle a thing, or what to buy for a person, etc. 

Talk shows aren’t really an option for Meghan though. I mean, if it were anyone else, they’d be on with Jenna Bush Hager making cookies. It’s riskier for Meghan though, most of us who aren’t haters can appreciate why she’s reticent to participate in these kinds of live settings that she might not be able to control. A magazine interview, where almost everything can be negotiated, is a safer environment. And it’s a get for the magazine that’s able to land her for a cover story because she doesn’t do it all that often. This time it’s Harper’s Bazaar. 

There’s not much that’s notable in the interview, and this isn’t a knock on Meghan exclusively. Anodyne is the default setting now for magazine cover stories – see also Jennifer Aniston. Jennifer Aniston has been saying pretty much the same thing in every magazine she’s covered in the last 20 years. And to me this is an apt comparison because the California platitudes you hear so often from Jen are similar to what Meghan’s saying in Harper’s Bazaar. All the buzzwords and phrases show up: vulnerability, authenticity, staying present, rejecting perfection… this is also the common vernacular of influencers. So we’re on track. Meghan is an influencer, lean into the influencer way. 

That pretty much sums up the article, let’s get to Meghan’s fashion – Harper’s after all is a fashion magazine. And it’s been a long minute since we’ve seen Meghan featured in a fashion editorial. Appearing at Pierpaolo Piccioli’s first show for Balenciaga during Paris Fashion Week though might have signalled that she’ll be adding more fashion content to her influencer portfolio.

The editorial here is firmly in her style lane though, mostly neutrals with a pop of red, disappointingly nothing adventurous. I really want to see what Meghan would look like in the hands of major celebrity stylist, like Wayman + Micah or Law Roach or Jason Bolden, but perhaps we need to build up to it. What we’re getting for now is basically a quiet luxury shoot, more Goop than high glam, although you could argue that with a face card like this, the clothes shouldn’t be getting in the way of the beauty. Meghan is SO beautiful. 

Here’s my favourite shot out of all of them, because it’s the outlier. Standard pose during the heyday of the girl boss but definitely not standard for a duchess. 

Meghan slouched back in a chair, legs not crossed but spread, it’s a body position that’s meant to say IDGAF. Which is definitely not the vibe of the interview, LOL, but is hopefully the energy that she’s projecting moving forward where the British media and the monarchy is concerned. Followed up by this image, of Meghan with her hands on her hips, looking down and laughing it off, as if to say, stay mad, but I won’t. 

If there was one curious detail from the article that’s worth talking about though, it’s not to do with anything that Meghan says but an observation that the writer, Kaitlyn Greenidge, included twice…and probably intentionally. It happens near the beginning of the piece at an event involving STEM students where Meghan makes an appearance. And just before she alights from the car, someone announces her arrival, literally, “The Duchess of Sussex”. Then again, midway through the article, Kaitlyn goes to see Meghan at a private residence. 

“We’re in a grand brownstone on the Upper East Side that belongs to one of Meghan’s friends. When I enter, the house manager announces, “Meghan, Duchess of Sussex,” even though we appear to be the only other two people in the house.”

Girl, if I were writing the piece, I would include that detail too, because it’s noteworthy. Was the house manager told that they’d have to make the proclamation? Probably not usually a part of their job, so the direction had to come from somewhere. Is this standard procedure whenever Meghan shows up somewhere? If you invited her over for lunch, but you didn’t have a house manager, who’s the person expected to megaphone her title to whoever’s sitting in the living room? 

Is that what happened when she and Harry showed up at Kris Jenner’s 70th birthday party? Did someone with a top hat and a bugle tell everyone at Jeff Bezos’s mansion that the Duchess of Sussex had arrived? Why didn’t it happen – at least it wasn’t mentioned – at the Polo Lounge where Meghan and Kaitlyn had lunch? Is anyone else as obsessed about this as I am? 

Click here for Meghan in Harper's Bazaar and join us for the conversation at The Squawk! (App link here.)