Princess Lilibet 'clone' rumours flared online this month after royal commentators highlighted eerie similarities between new photos of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle's daughter in California and a child model used by San Francisco clothing brand Lil Olives to launch its 2024 summer collection.
Meghan released carefully cropped images on social media to mark Princess Lilibet's fifth birthday, showing the young royal barefoot in a garden in a cream sundress, her face turned away from the camera, a delicate bracelet visible on her wrist. Days later, internet sleuths seized on a Lil Olives campaign shot of another auburn‑haired girl in a floppy straw hat and patterned dress, also wearing a bracelet on her left wrist, and began to ask whether the Sussexes' attempts to shield their daughter's identity were inadvertently fuelling a hunt for a Princess Lilibet 'clone' elsewhere online.
How a Children's Brand Was Pulled Into the Princess Lilibet 'Clone' Theory
Lil Olives is a small San Francisco children's label founded this year by mother‑of‑two Dhanya Gutta, trading on soft‑focus images and talk of 'heirloom' clothes. The image at the centre of the row shows a long‑haired girl, head tipped slightly down, hand in hand with another child, modelling the brand's Buttercream Bloom Dress from its 'Petite Fleurs' collection, which is described as being 'inspired by European summers.'
Royal commentator Paula Froelich, who writes the Paula Froelich: Uncensored Substack, was the first to stitch the threads together in public. She did not just flag the resemblance between the girl and Princess Lilibet. She also pointed readers toward what she argued were striking similarities in the language used on the Lil Olives website and the online home of Meghan's lifestyle venture, As Ever.
Me realising that actually Prince George and Princess Charlotte are starting to look like Windsor twins😍
— Canellecitadelle (@Canellelabelle) June 13, 2026
They left Prince Louis in the Middleton corner😭#PrinceGeorge#PrincessCharlotte pic.twitter.com/RMhsEWu62y
'Sometimes you see two seemingly separate brands – one a bland, beige 'cozy' lifestyle brand with 'keepsake' boxes, another a bland, beige 'heirloom' children's clothing brand – and you can't help but wonder... what the hell is going on here?' she wrote.
Froelich said she ran website descriptions from both companies through AI assistant Claude, which she claimed concluded they shared 'a rigid narrative formula, simply swapping the nouns to fit the specific prompt.' That, on its own, would barely raise an eyebrow in 2024, when AI‑assisted copywriting is routine across e‑commerce. What jolted royal‑watching circles was the visual echo between Lilibet's birthday photos and the Lil Olives shoot.
As ever with the Sussexes, privacy sat at the core of the storm. Meghan's birthday images showed the princess only in profile or from behind. In both, her bracelet is visible but her face is not. The Lil Olives model, by contrast, looks straight into the lens in other shots from the same campaign. Froelich described the child as 'very similar‑looking' to Princess Lilibet and openly asked subscribers, 'Is this Lili in the Lil' Olives ad? Who knows. Are any of the images AI‑generated?'
Nothing in the available material confirms any link between the Sussex family and Lil Olives, and there is no verified evidence that the child in the advert is Princess Lilibet or an AI fabrication. Absent formal clarification from the brand or the couple, all such speculation should be treated with caution.
Royal Commentators Divide Over the Princess Lilibet 'Clone' Speculation
That caveat has not cooled the chatter. On Substack, fellow royal commentator Shauna Kay called the side‑by‑side images 'eerie' and admitted, 'This blew my mind! Could it be true?' The breathless tone feels a long way from traditional palace reporting, but it reflects the modern reality that royal narratives are now hashed out on newsletters and YouTube channels as much as in broadsheets.
Broadcaster Dan Wootton, speaking on his Dan Wootton Outspoken YouTube channel, leaned into the intrigue, calling the whole situation a 'mystery.' Yet he also put some blame back on the Duchess of Sussex.
'This could be a total coincidence, of course it could be,' he told viewers, before arguing that Meghan's practice of obscuring Lilibet's face encourages precisely the sort of Princess Lilibet 'clone' theories that are now spiralling. 'Actually, if she were just to post normal pictures... then everyone would be able to speak and talk about Lili normally, rather than this sort of internet hunt to find the real Lili,' he said.
Meanwhile, Meghan has quietly carried on posting curated glimpses of her daughter. On 10 June she shared an image of Lilibet wearing a T‑shirt emblazoned with an illustration of Beyoncé and the slogan 'B is for Beyonce,' again without revealing the child's full face. For the couple's critics, it is a calculated blend of brand, celebrity friendship and carefully rationed royal intimacy. For their supporters, it is a reasonable compromise.
Behind the scenes, there are signs of a shift in how the Sussexes view this balancing act. Royal commentator Rob Shuter, on his Naughty But Nice Substack, quoted an unnamed insider who insisted Prince Harry had not only signed off on the birthday photos but actively supported releasing them.
Why Meghan Markle, Prince Archie and Princess Lilibet Aren't Expected to Join Prince Harry in the U.K. Next Month https://t.co/uSeqISEVWl
— People (@people) June 12, 2026
'Harry is completely on board now,' the source claimed. 'There was a time when he wanted the children almost entirely out of public view. That's changed.' The insider argued that his objection was never to family photos as such but to 'photographers stalking his children,' saying that controlled images shared 'on their terms, when they want, how they want' feel different to the prince.
For a couple who have spent years fighting tabloids over intrusion, it is an awkward irony that their efforts to protect their daughter's anonymity have helped conjure a Princess Lilibet 'clone' narrative around a completely unrelated child model. Whether the Lil Olives image is remembered as a curious footnote or the moment the Sussexes rethink their strict no‑faces policy will depend, in the end, on how long this particular mystery holds the internet's attention.
