One of my favorite social media things is when someone provides receipts with a comment of “this you?” I’ve only been on the receiving end of a “this you?” one time, and it haunts me to this day (I made a stupid tennis prediction, lesson learned). Well, the Daily Mail just this-you’d the Duchess of Sussex. They had to go back TEN YEARS to find the receipts, all to ask “this you?” about candles. I’m not joking. You know how Meghan’s As Ever brand sells $64 candles? Well, in 2016, Meghan said that expensive candles are “obnoxious.” Honestly, I’m sort of impressed by the maniacial effort it took from a crack team of fixated derangers and the Daily Mail, all to get this well-earned “this you?” The problem is that, in 2016, Meghan specified a number: $100. Again, she’s selling $64 candles right now.
Meghan Markle branded expensive candles ‘so obnoxious’ before she began flogging her own As Ever range inspired by Prince Harry and their children. The Duchess of Sussex insisted that selling candles for more than $100 would go against her own ‘girl next door’ business ethos.
Speaking on stage in 2016, the year she started dating Prince Harry, Meghan said she wanted to market items that the majority of people can afford to buy.
‘There are no $100 candles on my site – that’s so obnoxious,’ she said to an audience as she promoted her now defunct blog The Tig. ‘I just want things on there that you can have. And I want people who understand that ethos. I’ve always crafted it [The Tig] as “aspirational girl next door”, like, you can aspire for it but totally attain it too.’
But ten years on, her critics pointed out that she is currently selling her own scented candle set for more than double the $100 price tag she dismissed as ‘obnoxious’. Meghan’s $256 (£190) ‘Signature Scent Collection’ is now for sale on the As Ever website.
Critics have dug up the unseen video of the Duchess criticising sites selling expensive candles. Speaking to an audience at the Create & Cultivate conference in Atlanta in October 2016, she said her blog The Tig was ‘my baby’ and going to expand.
‘I didn’t want MeghanMarkle.com. I don’t want this just to be me. I want this to be a community much greater than that.’
She described The Tig as having ‘evolved into an amazing community of inspiration, support, fun and frivolity’.
Meghan said she was looking for someone to help her run her blog and expand it. However despite her expansion plans, she closed The Tig in 2017, shortly before announcing her engagement to Harry. A decade on, Meghan has returned to lifestyle with her own brand.
What I love most about this is… it’s not even a contradiction or some kind of exposed hypocrisy. In 2016, Meghan was very specific: I’m never going to make you pay $100 for one candle. And she’s not. You can buy one of her signature candles for $64. The only way you’re paying more than $100 is if you’re buying one of the candle SETS with multiple candles. This isn’t the gotcha they think it is! It’s also a funny “this you?” because Meghan was fully building her lifestyle brand a decade ago… which means that this was always who she was and is. It’s a reminder that Meghan just picked up where she left off.
Incidentally, Meghan introduced a new product last week: As Ever matches, to light your As Ever candles. Unfortunately, the matchbox is not sold individually, it’s tied to various candle bundles.
Photos courtesy of Instar, As Ever’s Instagram. Screencaps courtesy of Fortune’s YouTube video.
