The PR elves were
clearly at work when the publicist-friendly magazine US Weekly reported this
week that Meghan Markle, best known as the Duchess of Sussex, will be editing the
September issue of British Vogue.
According to US, Meg will "will be writing an opinion piece of her own as well as bringing a selection of female change-makers on board to write their own personal essays."
In addition, she will be posing for a fashion shoot at Frogmore Cottage with her child Archie - the first public appearance of the renovated home, and Archie's third public appearance, provided that some portion of him does not show up on Instagram on Father's Day. (A close-up of Archie's feet was posted to celebrate Mother's Day)
But why has one of the world's worst-dressed celebrities been chosen to edit one of British fashion's best-known fashion magazines?
Industry doldrums
Vogue UK isn't the cultural force it was 15 years ago,
or even three years ago, when Duchess of
Cambridge appeared on the cover of its 100-year anniversary issue.
Young
consumers don't turn to Vogue for fashion advice: they look at influencers on
Instagram or YouTube, or make note of what young celebrities like Zendaya or
Elle Fanning are wearing. Print advertisers have followed consumers, spending
more of their money on sponsored posts and less on buying pages in print
magazines like Vogue.
The international unit of Condé Nast, the publisher of
Vogue UK, lost £14 million in 2017, the last full-year figures that are available, with
declines particularly sharp in Western Europe.
Vogue UK was supposed to get a boost from the appointment of a new, younger editor, the Ghana-born Edward Enniful, an
industry veteran who was also the first man to serve as the magazine's
editor-in-chief. Enniful diversified the Vogue team, bringing on a female
publisher of African descent as well as adding prominent Black women to the
editorial team, like Naomi Campbell, Pat McGrath, and Adwoa Aboah.
Circulation did rise
slightly in 2018, but
there is no indication that the increase has continued. The digital edition,
supposedly the magazine's future, is facing rough competition from free
content.
And really, when was the last time you heard someone talking about something they saw in Vogue?
And really, when was the last time you heard someone talking about something they saw in Vogue?
Is
Meghan's editing role a PR placement?
Meghan has never been shy about using a large portion of her income for PR, which she has done as far back as her Suits days. She clearly places articles in other fashion magazines (like this barf-inducing piece in Elle). Vogue competitor Harper's Bazaar has been a regular go-to for the placement of Meghan-friendly articles.
Has
Vogue UK fallen so far that it is willing to let Meghan purchase an editing
role for its vaunted September issue? It's hard to tell.
But it
would be interesting to see more recent Vogue UK profit numbers, or circulation
numbers, or ad page numbers. My guess is that they are not good.
She coulda been a contender
Meghan
doesn't have to be poorly dressed. The costumers on her Canada-based series
Suits put her in flattering blouses and pencil skirts, and she's also scored a
few hits as a Royal, such as a lovely Safiyaa blue cape dress
in Fiji and
an attractive green ensemble for her visit to Ireland, although there were a
few questions about why Meghan the animal lover had turned up in a leather
skirt.
But since Meg's primary source of income appears to be "merching" - wearing clothing or jewellery that serves as an advertisement to the designer or manufacturer - she needs to wear what her clients pay her to wear, which is often a season ahead of the date she is wearing it.
That's why we saw her in leather gloves at last week's Trooping of the Color - a summer event held on a warm, sunny day. It was the second time she'd been photographed with leather gloves in summer: she wore a pair to Prince Louis' christening in July 2018.
It also means she often wears summer clothes in the winter (like the undersized summer dress she wore to meet pensioners in December 2018) and dark clothes in the summer, such as her blue-black outfit at the Trooping of the Color.
Sponsored vs fashionable
Prioritizing the generation of income from her clothes means Meghan hasn't achieved the fashion icon
status she so dearly desires. Sophie Wessex, a dumpy minor Royal twenty years
older than Meghan, has more consistent clothes sense than Meghan does.
How will Enniful handle her insistence on wearing sponsored clothing? Will he and Meg's team be able to come up with something stunning that she can also get paid to wear?
Vogue is no stranger to choosing its editorial fashion based on commercial considerations - who can forget Meryl Streep playing Vogue editor Anne Wintour in "The Devil Wears Prada" looking at a fashion layout and sighing Where are the advertisers?
Perhaps she and Enniful can find a compromise - or perhaps the same sponsor will pay both of them.
Giving her something to do
Letting Meghan play at
editing the September issue of Vogue - maybe even paying placement fees for her
to do so - might be the Royals' attempt at giving her something to do.
She no longer appears to
be writing Harry's speeches. Instagram posts on @SussexRoyal no longer mention
her when covering events she has nothing to do with, suggesting that she has
been roped in there, as well.
Is the idea to keep her
busy in order to keep her out of trouble? Good luck with that.
Comments
Yeah, it'll be interesting to see what happens about the photo shoot in the not-really-renovated (so is it even habitable?) Frogmore Cottage with Archie (can't be a pillow baby then, I don't imagine).
At TOTC that show on the balcony was something, no one making eye contact with Meghan, Anne moving Meghan away from the Queen, Meghan pretending to talk with someone, and Harry telling her twice to turn around and face forward. And Meghan thought she was going to modernize the monarchy.
https://radaronline.com/exclusives/2019/06/meghan-markle-dating-history-brits-she-chased-before-catching-prince-harry/
As a Lipstick Alley commenter pointed out yesterday, the only place Meg still gets big organic (non-paid) headlines is the Daily Mail, which is because the DM can count on the enraged public to show up and create lots of clicks as they leave irate comments.
I think it's a rebellion against the female-directed media (celebrity and fashion magazines) that keeps pushing the idea that Meghan is a likeable, admirable person living an imitable life. Anyone with an eye in their head can see that's not true, and I think it grates on people to be so flamboyantly lied to.
Part of the problem, I would imagine, is that Harry is notoriously cheap and Meg needs a lot of money to fund her PR habit. That means merching, which means last-minute deliveries of badly-tailored clothes.
The outfit at Louis' christening wasn't bad, but it didn't match the rest of the Royal Family, who were all in shades of beige and blue. The same was true at Trooping of the Color: all the other women were in ice-cream summer colors, and Meg was in blue-black.
In an article that is ludicrous even by Meghan's standards, apparently Archie was at Trooping of the Color - you just couldn't see him. https://www.cosmopolitan.com/entertainment/celebs/a27954268/meghan-markle-prince-harry-archie-trooping-the-colour/
I have no great insights about TOTC that haven't been said better by other people, but I do think that Meghan's puffiness is the result of some type of medication. She didn't look like that a month ago, when she and Harry presented Archie to the world.
An occasional French or Canadian or American piece is fine, but I feel the majority of her wardrobe should be British.
Why not discover some up-and-coming British designers, including female and/or nonwhite British designers? She could promote her "girl power" message while giving her fellow citizens some valuable international exposure.
Bending the rules got her to the British Royal Family, ahead of dozens if not other briefcase girls, yacht girls, and low-wattage starlets.
From her point of view, why stop now? Her M.O. is to do what she wants and worry about pushback later. Or not worry about pushback at all.
Remember the blue and white floral that swamped her, from the too long sleeves, too much fabric, too long length? If you forget, here for just one example:
https://www.elle.com/uk/fashion/celebrity-style/a21588290/meghan-markle-blue-oscar-de-la-renta-wrap-dress/
How about the far too tight Roland Mouret gray dress in Ireland? The pants that drag the ground in Scotland? The white pants that drag the ground at Wimbledon? Wrinkled fabrics caused from a poor choice of fabric? Just a few examples.
If you think this is style, maybe being a self proclaimed "fashionista" isn't your best bet.
Still plenty of Mysteries of Meghan to still illuminate . . The biggest one (apart from the circumstances surrounding 'Archie's' birth must be . . WHY is she allowed to behave like this? Why do the RF let her seemingly do whatever she wants? Andrew, Sophie, Edward, Fergie . . all of them have gotten into super-heated hot water with the Queen for past attempts to exploit their royal connections for personal gain. (Charles feuds with both his brothers; Ed got in the doghouse for having a camera crew from his production company harass William in his first year at St. Andrews, despite a moratorium on all other press outlets. Chas had choice words for his little brother when he found out, ones that would make a sailor of Her Majesty's Royal Navy proud; maybe they've made up by now.) But Meghan, the crass newlywed gets to plant paid publicity favorable to herself and detrimental to the Cambridges, and go out on official engagements looking like a cross between a hobo and Miss Saigon?
If she were manhandled back into the car and whisked away before cameras could capture her picture every time she turned up at a public appearance not properly dressed . . we'd never see her. British good manners and distaste for confrontation are stymied when confronted by such jaw-dropping classlessness as Farkle, who violates every one of their codified and unspoken rules of conduct every time we see her. The RF can't seem to cope with her. Even with LG on the case, she's still pulling her brazen con act. It flummoxes me.
It's baldly obvious that Meg didn't spend that colossal amount of money, a million British pounds . .on bespoke designer fashions that are currently haning in her closet at Frogmore. She's billed the Duchy of Cornwall for all these ill-fitting designer samples.
Charles had better demand to see the clothes before he pays the bills, that's all I can say. Or perhaps he *has* cut them off? Is that why Harry's going round in crumpled, mismatched pants and jackets with no ties and holes in his shoes . . and why Meg looks like the world's most expensive tart/hobo, compliments of her free designer glad rags? Both of them are an embarrassment. Farkle is immune to embarrassment, but perhaps your next column needs to be entitled "Why, Hazza, Why? We Don't Understand You. At all."
Farkle has enablers in the hundreds. Thousands. For every magazine editor she's got in her pocket, there is someone much closer to home who is utterly disinclined/failing to reign her in. People can only be manipulated and used to the extent which they allow themselves to be manipulated and used. As the saying goes--Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice . . .shame on me. Someone(s) close to MM have to be feeling a heavy weight of shame. Lord knows *she* is immune to shame, too.
https://www.etonline.com/kate-middleton-looks-divine-in-recycled-off-the-shoulder-white-dress-at-gala-in-london-126920
Meghan is well known for making exact duplicates of Diana and Catherine's styles, and imitating Harry with the Las Vegas Panama hat; remarkably, she can't even do knock offs well.
This Meghan situation is a mess. So is her fashion sense.
Thanks Nutty. I have been enjoying your take on things.
""This is nothing to do with Archie, or family, or home life. It’s purely on women’s empowerment."
https://www.express.co.uk/news/royal/1139664/meghan-markle-news-vogue-prince-harry-archie-harrison-royal-family-latest
The article also says Meg refused to appear on Vogue's cover. Right.
No matter what the BRF does to include her, Meg will insist that they are racist whenever they finally show her the door. Perhaps they are allowing her to make herself terribly unpopular before they do so.
The Family needs to sort her out . . way out. The world can't take much more of this and frankly, she's making them look like powerless, weak-chinned idiots for not dealing with her. What happened to the 'Let's send the Sussexes away to Africa? (or anywhere but here?) Haven't heard a peep of that lately. Guess the move to L.A. will be postponed until after Vogue UK hits the stands.
Are you serious, about 'Archie' being at Trooping of the Colour? I've got to go check that article out, but I thought I'd hallucinated that comment during all the flurry of talk. I didn't think there was any way she'd truly attempt to say that the pillow was there, especially b/c there's supposedly no nanny, yet? (though there's conflicting reports on that, too, so... maybe there is a pillow nanny now?)
(~~off to go read it~~)
https://www.usmagazine.com/celebrity-moms/news/meghan-harrys-son-archie-met-his-cousins-at-trooping-the-colour/
The cover is at the bottom, or here's a link to it:
https://www.usmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/UW2519-Us-Weekly-Cover-Duchess-Kate.jpg
Archie gets continually referred to as 'a thing'. Do they really expect us to not cotton on to the not so subliminal meaning of that??
The text, in part, reads:
"EXCLUSIVE
Baby Archie Met Some of His Cousins at Trooping the Colour Parade: Details
...
“Archie was at Trooping the Colour,” a source told Us Weekly exclusively of the Saturday, June 8, parade in this week’s issue. “[It] was a chance for him to meet some of his cousins.”
...
The insider went on to say, “The reason Harry and Meghan didn’t appear on the balcony when the Queen returned back to Buckingham Palace was because she was breast-feeding.”
During the parade, the former actress, 37, had a hard time being away from her baby boy. “She has spent almost every moment with him and saying goodbye was very difficult,” the source told Us. “But Meghan truly wanted to be at the celebration for the queen. … Meghan loved seeing all the other royal children and was doting on them.”
The new mom isn’t the only one who struggles to be away from her infant. The Duke of Sussex, 34, felt the same way at a May overnight engagement in Italy, the Sentebale ISPS Handa Polo Cup.
“Harry left for Italy and it was very difficult for him to leave Archie and Meghan,” another source told Us at the time. “He wants to spend every second he can with them.”
They're really going all-in on the pillow-baby, if that's what it is.
Funny that Archie was supposedly behind the scenes at Trooping of the Color, but no one seems to have seen an automobile with a baby seat entering Buckingham Palace. I'm sure if they had, that would have generated a lot of excitement.
Archie did not arrive in the car with his mother.
I also enjoy Anonymoushouseplantfan on Tumblr, but she seems to be on a summer break.
I don't know why they don't focus more on wildlife preservation, particularly elephants, which everybody loves.
It's one of the few causes in which it could be argued that a Sussex is more useful than an ordinary African, since British royalty can bring worldwide attention to the poaching of elephants and its connection to the ivory trade.
The pieces are starting to fall into place . . thank you!
Another thought: if Meg's face is all bloated due to steroidal meds . . or most any other kind of meds, she couldn't be breastfeeding. I really can't wait for the next appearance of 'Archie' because there will be so very much to say about *that*.
Up until this point, the critical comments seemed more tempered - along the lines of well, she needs to realize she is a royal not a celeb, needs a dresser and she does seem to be spending like it is water but nothing so outright whisper of criticism from anyone in the BRF. And now, so public.
As far as for Vogue, I think the Vogue that has the most traction on Instagram is Vogue Portugal. At least, between fashion lovers everyone is loving it. The reason is that they re-branded themselves and created a different identity from mainstream Vogue editions. Whereas the content and clothes of Vogue US and UK I can find anywhere. There are no more inspiring editorial and no one find new designers anymore. To get any space there you need to pay for.
My favourite (and yes, it's snarktastic) was the Black Watch tartan coat in Edinburgh where she met the Regimental Mascot wearing a Black Watch tartan horse coat. I believe there is a who wore it better meme out there in internetz lands.
The idea that you need to pay for space in Vogue US and UK would fit well with the idea that Meg paid for her “guest editing” role.
Enty’s podcast the other day talked about the embarrassing PR pieces that had recently run in US Vogue about Priyanka and Nick Jonas (in which the reporter does not dispute the very odd timeline for their so-called romance) and Justin Bieber (in which the reporter doesn’t question Justin’s claim he was celibate for 18 months before his marriage).
That fits with your description of magazines adrift.
I have heard that some of her suppliers, like Givenchy, actually send along hair and makeup people to make sure she is not a complete mess.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-7141409/Did-Prince-Harry-tell-Meghan-turn-Trooping-Colour.html
Yeah, no child-seat seen in any of the pics I've seen. I wonder what's really going on.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=alVPJtD7O0U