Meghan Markle relaunches her lifestyle brand

Eleven months ago, the Duchess of Sussex promised big things with the launch of her new lifestyle brand. Last March eagle-eyed social media users quickly spotted a new Instagram account called “American Riviera Orchard” with the biography reading: “By Meghan, The Duchess of Sussex.” Yet fast forward to the beginning of 2025 and, er, nothing much had happened with it. Instead, it appeared like Meghan had turned her back on the project completely to focus on her new Netflix lifestyle show, With Love, Meghan. Well, it turns out that is half right…

The Queen of Privacy has, it transpires, binned off American Riviera Orchard — and relaunched her brand until the new and improved title “As Ever.” The new project is in partnership with Netflix — and will sell jam among other things — has been unveiled by the monarchs of Montecito on Instagram today. Claiming she had scrapped her previous brand name as it was “a nickname for Santa Barbara, but it limited me to things that were just manufactured and grown in this area,” Meghan gushed to her fans:

As Ever essentially means as it’s always been, and if you’ve followed me since 2014 with The Tig, you know I’ve always loved cooking and crafting and gardening — this is what I do.

How sweet. But the situation is a little less rosy than the Duchess of Sussex makes out. In fact, she ran into a rather lot of issues with her first lifestyle launch last year — suffering a setback when the US patent and trademark office refused her application over issues with both the name of her business and the products she was intending to sell. And there’s no guarantee there won’t be issues with “As Ever” either which, according to the US office, has not yet been successfully trademarked.

It’s the latest in a long list of ventures the Montecito monarchs have attempted to undertake. First there was the failed Spotify podcast Archetypes — which Spotify exec Bill Simmons fumed should have been called “the fucking grifters” — before Prince Harry’s underwhelming “Polo” docuseries, released last year to rather scathing reviews. The dilettante Duke and Duchess certainly have a lot to prove after signing an $100 million five-year deal with Netflix in 2020 but failing to deliver anything much other than a series of flops. Will Meghan’s latest projects be any different? We’ll see…