In these days of darkness we must take delight where we can find it, and one reliable source is the Duchess of Sussex. In her latest venture, Meghan, who occupies the tricky position of having a large platform and not enough to fill it (see also: Brooklyn Beckham), launched a new lifestyle brand that, she promised in a short video, would be “beautifully weaving together everything I cherish – food, gardening, entertaining, thoughtful living and finding joy in the everyday”. The brand American Riviera Orchard is dead. Long live the new brand, As Ever.
The duchess and her husband, Prince Harry, have to do something and good luck to them, but it’s hard not to study the rollout of As Ever for signs of the widening gap between Meghan’s self-image and how the rest of the world sees her. “‘As ever’,” writes the duchess on Instagram, “means ‘as it’s always been’ or some even say ‘in the same way as always’,” the “some” in this sentence apparently referring to the dictionary definition of a two-word phrase that no one has ever had trouble understanding.
