Bazaar

Last Friday, there was a steady drumbeat of bad headline after bad headline about Prince Andrew, all leading up to his big move of announcing that he was giving up his ducal title and his honors. Since then, a million stories have been published about Andrew and the House of York. I bring up the timeline because it’s astonishing to see how many stories were also published about the Duchess of Sussex in the hours and days after Andrew’s big announcement. Almost as if the same old rancid courtiers, royalists and editors decided to run the exact same play they’ve been running for six-plus years: whenever Andrew is in trouble, attack the Sussexes, particularly Meghan. Well, the Mail’s Alison Boshoff had a particularly unhinged story about Meghan’s “maneuvers” this month, from Meghan’s Paris Fashion Week appearance to her Q&A session with Fortune, to her meeting with Vogue’s new editor-in-chief. They are desperate to put the most negative spin on all of this.

It was obvious from her appearance in Paris during this month’s Fashion Week that Meghan was planning to place a dainty, size-six foot in the fashion world. For while the Duchess of Sussex may have accumulated many baubles, one long-held dream still eludes her: being awarded the cover of a high-end fashion magazine.Her Paris jaunt led to much speculation she was soon to announce she had made the cover of Vogue.

Indeed Meghan, a bold networker, shared hugs and air kisses with all-powerful global Vogue boss Anna Wintour and with American Vogue’s new editor, Chloe Malle, at the Balenciaga show in Paris. She also met with Malle when she was in New York on Friday last week. The two women were seen sharing what appeared to be cocktails in a booth at the Whitby hotel.

But while I’ve been told the Duchess is intent on building up her relationship with the venerable Conde Nast magazine, and does have a fashion magazine cover in the pipeline, it is not with Vogue. Rather, my sources exclusively tell me, Meghan has made a deal to appear on the cover of Harper’s Bazaar, published by media giant Hearst.

This cover will be a first for Meghan – who made the cover of Vanity Fair while dating Prince Harry – as she has yet to land the attentions of a high-fashion magazine. (While she guest edited the September 2019 edition of Vogue, she didn’t put her own face on the cover.)

Her meetings with Vogue supremos Wintour and Malle are, I can reveal, better viewed as Meghan trying to ‘reset’ relations. Because, as we shall see, there was a falling-out between her and the then UK Vogue Editor Edward Enninful three years ago, after the Duchess made high-handed demands of him – and it did her few favours with Anna Wintour.

While there was much talk of Meghan being pictured with Wintour, few remarked on her appearance at the Balenciaga show with Samir Nasr, the editor in chief of Harpers Bazaar. But it is Harper’s which has secured the Meghan ‘scoop’.

So is Meghan ‘on manoeuvres’ –and is this magazine cover step one of a comprehensive relaunch? Meghan 3.0, if you will? Well-placed insiders tell me the sudden burst of activity – which included an appearance at the Fortune Most Powerful Women event in Washington this week – doesn’t quite indicate anything so thought-through. The source said: ‘Her PR team are just putting her out there in a hopeful way without a plan. They aren’t being discerning and protecting her from herself. It seems they think every media opportunity is a good one and that’s insane.’

The source adds: ‘There is no strategy here. It is thoughtless and directionless. One day she is in Paris at the fashion show, positioning herself in that world, and then she shows up in Washington with Fortune magazine and wants to be regarded as a female founder. But she’s got nothing to launch, nothing to announce and nothing to say. It’s a mess. The Sussexes seem to be spiralling. They are throwing spaghetti at the wall and seeing what sticks. I don’t understand why she would do a magazine cover when she has nothing coming out. It is evident that either she isn’t being advised properly or else she isn’t listening. Honestly, whoever is in charge shouldn’t even be putting this stuff in front of her, to protect her from herself.’

[From The Daily Mail]

You have to understand the “magical thinking” that goes alongside these stories. What could have been a simple exclusive (which may or may not be true) about Meghan appearing on the cover of Harper’s Bazaar has to be twisted into “Meghan is desperate for a fashion cover, she has nothing to announce except for all of her projects, Anna Wintour hates her, believe us!!” Anna Wintour doesn’t hate her, and I strongly suspect that Meghan has been offered the cover of American Vogue before and turned it down. I also suspect that Meghan has turned down other fashion covers before. Just because the Mail’s lunatic-asylum sources claim that Meghan’s strategy is a “mess” does not make it so. These people are too stupid to understand how a woman could appear at a fashion show AND be a female founder.

Photos courtesy of Backgrid, screencaps courtesy of Fortune’s YouTube video.