There’s been a lot of confusion about Meghan Markle’s business venture American Riviera Orchard. On March 14, 2024, the Duchess of Sussex launched a website and Instagram for her new project, which seemed to have something to do with peddling food, cookbooks, and housewares. But nearly a year later, the sites have not been updated, and no products have been sold (though a few of Meghan’s famous pals received jars of American Riviera Orchard–brand strawberry jam).
Now, Markle has renamed her brand As Ever, but it seems everything else about the enterprise is the same. While the Duchess confirmed there will be jam, other details still remain sketchy. The As Ever website features a picture of Markle frolicking with her daughter, Lilibet, and an email sign-up, but no other information. All we know for sure is that Meghan Markle is trying to rebrand herself as a modern-day Martha Stewart, without the business acumen.
Markle announced the name change in a Tuesday Instagram post, which we are supposed to believe was filmed by Prince Harry. (It begins with the royal saying “It’s recording” off-camera, but presumably he had some help with all the zooms and edits in the final product.) A giggly Markle explains that with her Netflix lifestyle series With Love, Meghan debuting in two weeks, she has decided it’s time to share her brand’s new name with the world.
Markle makes it sound like it just occurred to her that the name American Riviera Orchard wasn’t working.
“Last year I had thought, you know, America Riviera, that sounds like such a great name,” she says. “It’s my neighborhood, it’s a nickname for Santa Barbara. But it limited me to things that were just manufactured and grown in this area.”
Is it a bad name? Sure. Was the issue that it limited Meghan to locally produced goods? Almost certainly not. Williams Sonoma is partly named after a location, but no one cares that all the products are not from Sonoma, California. Perhaps the real reason for the change is that Markle has been unable to trademark American Riviera Orchard. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office told her that businesses can’t trademark a location, and the brand Harry & David claimed the name is too similar to its “Royal Riviera” product line, according to the New York Post.
So why “As Ever”? Markle gives two definitions of the term, though the meaning is pretty clear when used as a sign-off phrase. Then she clumsily tries to explain why it’s a good name for a brand that sells jam and unspecified non-jam products:
“As ever” means “as it’s always been” or, some even say, “in the same way as always.” If you’ve followed along since my days of creating the Tig, you’ll know this couldn’t be truer for me. This new chapter is an extension of what has always been my love language, beautifully weaving together everything I cherish — food, gardening, entertaining, thoughtful living, and finding joy in the everyday.
Markle also suggests the name change has something to with her Netflix deal, saying she decided to make the switch after “Netflix came on not just as my partner in the show but as my partner in my business, which was huge.” But if that’s the case, why are the show, With Love, Meghan, and the brand, As Ever, named after different sign-off phrases?
That remains a mystery. But the trailer for the show, which premieres on March 4, does offer some insight:
Doing a second brand unveiling when you have not managed to release any products in the past year is kind of embarrassing. But maybe that’s what the royal’s new public persona is all about. As she says in the trailer: “We’re not in the pursuit of perfection, we’re in the pursuit of joy.”
Okay, being forced to rebrand isn’t a joy, but luckily, Markle gives us a lot of other silly platitudes to choose from. How about: “I have to do it totally wrong to get it totally right.” It doesn’t really make sense, but that’s what the Duchess’s perfectly imperfect branding is all about!
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