Meghan Markle’s new lifestyle brand American Riviera Orchard appears to be incredibly personal to her—right down to the personal touch she added to its logo.
When Meghan launched a new website and Instagram page for the wide-ranging brand on March 14, she also revealed an elegant logo in script handwriting; People revealed that the text in the logo is in Meghan’s own handwriting, “which comes as no surprise, as she previously worked as a calligrapher,” the outlet reports.
When Meghan was kickstarting her acting career, she taught calligraphy, gift-wrapping, and book-binding at the Paper Source store in Beverly Hills from 2004 to 2005, People writes. “It was her part-time job as she was going through auditions,” Paper Source CEO Winnie Park previously told the publication. “She taught calligraphy and hosted a group of customers and instructed them during a two-hour class on how to do calligraphy.”
Meghan also worked as a freelance calligrapher, and even racked up some celebrity clients—one of her gigs was writing the invitations for the 2005 wedding of Robin Thicke and Paula Patton.
“I met her because she helped me with my wedding invitations,” Patton said in 2018, the same year Meghan married Harry. “She had this beautiful writing. That moment I feel like I said something to her, like, ‘You are really meant to be royal.’ She was just so graceful and lovely, and actually really kind.” (Thicke and Patton were married for 10 years, from 2005 to 2015.)
“I think handwritten notes are a lost art form,” Meghan wrote on her former lifestyle blog, “The Tig.” “The idea of someone taking the time to put pen to paper is really special.”
Over the years, we’ve gotten glimpses of Meghan’s impeccable handwriting from signatures she’s left in guest books to writing personal thank you notes. (Even her husband Prince Harry has admitted that Meghan’s penmanship is “much nicer than mine.”) Harry and Meghan’s joint cypher seems to be inspired by Meghan’s calligraphy skills, with its romantically intertwined “H” and “M.”
“Meghan’s love of calligraphy was also apparent in the crest featured in the American Riviera Orchard logo, creatively combining an ‘A’ and ‘O’ with some extra flourishes,” People writes. Completing the logo is the word “Montecito,” where Harry and Meghan live with their two kids, Prince Archie and Princess Lilibet. The lifestyle brand—expected to roll out this spring—teased its very first product offering just yesterday.
