Meghan: A Hollywood Princess(43)
First off the runway in the Meghan Markle Collection were four distinct dresses: the Soiree, Date Night, a maxi-dress named the Sunset and a Little White Dress. Once she had approved the designs, it was a fingers and toes crossed moment for the actor, anxious that her fans and the wider public appreciated her efforts. As she wrote in her blog: “I toiled over design and print, I shared my thoughts on everything and I ended up with a limited collection of pieces that reflect facets of my personal style that I think you’ll love.”
All the dresses sold for under $100 each, revealing the budget-conscious nature of their creator, who boasted that she shopped the sale rack. “I’ve always been the girl flipping through hangers looking for the best deal.”
Of course, that’s not quite true. When her designer friend Misha Nonoo invited her to join her at the 2015 Vogue CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund awards in New York in early November, Meghan was thrilled to wear one of the pieces from her collection. It was a short liquid metal dress that showed off her legs combined with a plunging deep V neck. It was a showstopper, and photographers clamored for a snap of the TV star.
Not only was she a photographers’ darling, a billboard pinup, and a TV regular, the ubiquitous Meghan Markle was now the central character in a chick lit novel, What Pretty Girls Are Made Of, written by her “bestie from the westie” Lindsay Jill Roth, who was such a frequent visitor to her Toronto home that the spare bedroom was christened Lindsay’s room. It had taken Roth five years, and copious glasses of wine, to craft the jaunty novel based on the exploits of her heroine, Alison Kraft. Since Alison was a little girl, all she has ever dreamed of is being an actor. Too bad that after years of auditions she doesn’t have the stellar career she envisioned. After some soul searching, she looks for other jobs and ends up working for a makeup guru.
It was of course a thinly disguised portrait of Meghan during her lean years in the noughties. Lindsay had all the research material she needed, not just from Meghan’s lips but from the blog Working Actress, about the ups and downs of life for a struggling wannabe, which Meghan is now credited with writing. Meghan loved it, posting effusive Instagrams touting the fluffy tome. Naturally she was at the summer launch party, afterward taking her pal to an ice hockey game. Not only did Lindsay give her actor friend a shout-out for helping her explore “what pretty is,” she sent a copy of her amusing trifle to Kate Middleton at Kensington Palace, her accompanying card informing the duchess that in her eyes she was the definition of “prettiness.”
Lindsay then proudly posted the pro forma thank-you note from the Duchess of Cambridge’s office online. She never for a second contemplated meeting the future queen at Windsor Castle after her best friend married Prince Harry. If she had suggested that plot to her publisher, they would have laughed her out of their New York offices.
In fact, Meghan was about to get married, but neither to Prince Harry nor her boyfriend Cory Vitiello. She was due to walk down the aisle with badass lawyer Mike Ross in the climax to Suits season 5. Filming was scheduled for November 13 before the show wrapped for the Christmas break. As she read the script, Meghan thought that if she was getting married, at the very least she—or Rachel—wanted a say in the style of the wedding dress. She contacted Suits costumer Jolie Andreatta and her friend, wedding stylist Jessica Mulroney, for inspiration. The three women met at the Toronto outpost of New York–based bridal store Kleinfeld. The store, which boasts thirty thousand square feet of bridal wear in Manhattan, has a much smaller outlet at the Bay. “I need something that will be comfortable and won’t wrinkle, that’s classic and sort of fairy tale,” explained Meghan. Jessica pulled out an Anne Barge full-skirted V-neck with Swiss dot netting. Meghan tried it on. “It screams Rachel!” she exclaimed.
“We need the dress in two days,” said Jolie. “Can we do this?” In the original script Mike and Rachel were finally going to get hitched. However, after producer Gabriel Macht and series creator Aaron Korsh reviewed the scenario, they decided it would be more plausible if Mike went to jail and told Meghan’s character, a sobbing Rachel Zane, that he cannot marry her—at least not yet. Maybe later…. This was the cliffhanger for the series 5 finale, which was broadcast in March 2016.
After filming her emotional scenes with Mike Ross, Meghan flew to a place about as cold as, if not colder than, Toronto. The California girl headed to Iceland to see the northern lights, along the way discovering the Town of Elves, álfab?rinn, where she couldn’t resist posting a photograph on her Instagram site. From admittedly knowing little about the inner workings of the internet, Meghan was now a social media junkie, posting cute selfies, wry observations—New Year’s resolutions were to “run a marathon, stop biting my nails, stop swearing and relearn French”—and intelligent essays on her burgeoning accounts.
In the eighteen months since it had launched, Meghan had assiduously used The Tig to promote what she felt was important and beautiful: a charming photograph of her mom on Mother’s Day, a recipe for beet pasta with arugula pesto, suggested reading lists, her favorite picture by Australian artist Gray Malin, or a shot of her eating a raw urchin as she stood in the warm Caribbean surf. Meghan was relentless, diligent, and disciplined about creating daily content. She brought in guest writers like PR guru Lucy Meadmore to write about a trip to Costa Rica, her yoga coach Duncan Parviainen, and her Suits costar Abigail Spencer. However, there was a serious underpinning to all this gauze. In an essay titled “Champions of Change,” Meghan wrote passionately about race relations, retelling the family story about the segregation they suffered during a road trip from Ohio to California. “It reminds me of how young our country is,” she told her readers. “How far we’ve come and how far we still have to come. It makes me think of the countless black jokes people have shared in front of me, not realizing I am mixed, unaware that I am the ethnically ambiguous fly on the wall.” With its mix of serious and frivolous, girly and gritty, The Tig had the feel of an upmarket women’s magazine but in Meghan’s distinctive voice. As she said about her baby: “It’s my outlet to say my own words and to share all these things that I find inspiring and exciting, but also attainable.” The baby was bringing home a little bacon, too. Through her shopping program and the promotion of brands such as Birchbox, a subscription beauty box brand, she was now making a little money off the venture. “I would never take ads,” she said. “Or sell a $100 candle. Obnoxious.”