Is There Room For Meghan Markle In The Domestic Goddess Cannon?
Cake-making, flower-arranging, and tablescaping; these are just a few of Meghan Markle’s, (formerly the Duchess of Sussex) favourite things. She loves them so much in fact that she’s made a Netflix series of them in the streamers’ latest limited series, With Love, Meghan. The release marks a stark departure from Markle’s days as a senior royal within the British Royal Family. Here, with With Love, Meghan, we see the picture-perfect princess graduate from just living her fairytale to monetising it.
Devotees will argue it’s a hark back to the days of The Tig, where Markle espoused the virtues of living well on the personal blog she maintained before falling for the fifth in-line to the throne. Detractors will make the case that it’s aggressively aspirational, particularly at a time of stark inflation and in the aftermath of the California wildfires, which devastated large swathes of Los Angeles, where Markle lives and the series is filmed. While Meghan did delay the release of the series, to many, it felt like the dust hardly had time to settle before Markle swept it to the side, and began aestheticising a glossy and glamorous Los Angeleno existence.
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‘In each episode, we join Meghan in the kitchen, garden — and even at the beehive — as she prepares to host friends both old and new,’ Netflix says in its release of the series. ‘With Love, Meghan blends practical how-tos and candid conversation with friends, new and old. Meghan shares personal tips and tricks, embracing playfulness over perfection, and highlights how easy it can be to create beauty, even in the unexpected.’ It’s little wonder that the New York Times bequeathed the moniker of ‘the millennial Martha Stewart of Montecito'. ‘Everyone's invited to create wonder in every moment,’ as Markle herself puts it. Except you can’t help but feel that, in such dark and difficult times economically, socially and politically, it all feels a little out of tune. It might be possible for Markle to spend her days embracing playfulness over perfection, but for the everyday person just surviving, let alone thriving, is proving hard enough.
The show also coincides with the re-brand of Markle’s lifestyle brand, As Ever. Formerly introduced as American Riviera Orchard, the Duchess of Sussex was forced to rebrand her lifestyle label after she was refused a trademark for the brand after the US Patent and Trademark Office said geographical locations could not be patented. In a video shared to her Instagram, announcing the re-brand, Markle claimed that her pivot to As Ever meant that she would not be confined to selling local produce. American Riviera Orchard is a common nickname for Santa Barbara in California, where Markle resides with Prince Harry and their two children, Archie and Lilibet. Markle soft-launched her lifestyle label by sending handmade jars of strawberry jam to 50 high-profile friends in 2024, and has since applied through her As Ever brand to sell edible dried flowers — which she’s seen liberally sprinkling in the trailer for With Love, Meghan — as well as dried cookie and crepe mixes.
That’s not to say that any of this is particularly out of the ordinary. Much has been made of the domestic goddess of late. Nara Smith has subverted the cookie cutter home-maker image of yesteryear on its head by making everything — including toothpaste — from scratch while wearing haute couture in her immaculate kitchen. The model-turned-home maker now has a following on TikTok of 11.5 million. Similarly to Markle, it’s also assiduously aspirational in a way that’s been satirised by the internet at large because of its inaccessibility. Yet the difference between Markle and Smith is that one has been scrutinized in the glare of public life for years, attempting to establish herself under various different guises during that time, and another has made this strain of docile domesticity her very raison d’être from the beginning of her ascent.
There’s also the second-coming of the OG 'DGs', Martha Stewart and Ina Garten, both of whom have found renewed popularity on TikTok. The critical difference between Stewart and Garten and Markle, though, is the disparities of the times in which their stars ascended. Stewart and Garten exploded in popularity during the 1980s and 1990s when the economy was booming, and hope could be found everywhere for those who looked for it. Things felt possible. It felt possible to have it all, in a way that feels all but out of reach today. Despite her love of baking and bee-keeping, it feels somehow difficult to watch in real-time the direct correlation between a person's wealth increasing and their proclivity to prioritising creating a sanguine home environment. I have long been a proponent for Markle and Prince Harry. I've rooted for them and vehemently defended them when others haven't, but why is it that wealthy women feel the need to monetise their home-making? Have we not already reached peak celebrity lifestyle brand?
Markle is a mother, a wife and a shrewd businesswoman, of that there’s little doubt. And given that Netflix has thrown its weight behind lifestyle content before — Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop found a home on the streamer too with its namesake series — it seems plausible, if not entirely probable, that With Love, Meghan might be renewed for another season. It’s also just as probable that its ratings fail to convert into a meaningful, tangible business proposition for the Duchess of Sussex. The whole thing — the series at a time such as this, and the lifestyle announcement and consequent re-brand — leaves a slightly sour taste in one's mouth, one that may or may not be sweetened with a sprinkling of Markle's domesticity.
With Love, Meghan is on Netflix from March 4.
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