Palace Grows Concerned as Harry and Meghan ‘Push the Envelope’ on Aussie Tour: Report
Prince Harry and Meghan Markle are turning their 'faux royal' tour into every bit of a commercial venture, and the palace is definitely not too happy about it.
Meghan Markle has always had an eye for opportunity, and reinvention is her go-to game. And in her latest venture for reinvention, she has quietly monetized her tour wardrobe while visiting children's hospitals and veterans' museums in Australia, and has caught the attention of the one audience she can no longer afford to ignore. The Palace has noticed. And it is not pleased.
The major bone of contention here is OneOff, a fashion discovery platform in which the Duchess has invested and from which she earns a share of sales. Since touching down in Australia on Tuesday, Markle's page on the platform has been updated with seven shoppable looks from the tour. Each outfit, worn on what has been billed as a charitable visit, comes with a direct "buy now" link. According to Vogue, retailers pay OneOff between 10 and 25 percent per sale, a cut that is then split with the creator.
And as per The Telegraph, the commercialization of the Duchess's wardrobe has "caused considerable concern" behind Palace gates. The frustration among royal insiders is barely disguised. "Everybody just rolls their eyes now as they know the routine — push the envelope, get criticized, reverse tack and say you made a donation," one royal source said. "By making money while doing 'philanthropic' work, they very much appear to be having their cake and eating it."
A second insider barely held back, saying, "Grifting is one thing, but carrying out a faux royal visit to a children's hospital while flogging your outfits online appears to have crossed a line." The wardrobe bit is just one of the incidents that sit in the commercial picture. Tickets to a high-end "girls' weekend" retreat in Sydney have been priced between $2,620 and $2,760 for VIP access to Markle. Prince Harry, meanwhile, headlined Melbourne's InterEdge Summit as a guest speaker, with delegate tickets at $690, platinum tickets at $1,640, and virtual access to his speech at $340. The tour's charitable framing and its commercial reality are becoming increasingly difficult to reconcile.
And what is inviting the ire of the palace is that this was ideally solved 5 years ago, when they decided to move to the other side of the pond. The late Queen led talks at the Sandringham Summit, and the palace's position was clear: there would be no half-in, half-out arrangement. Working roles, military appointments, and the Sussex Royal name were all removed — the last specifically to prevent any suggestion that their commercial ventures carried royal backing. They were free to earn but not to blur the line.
Since then, palace aides had largely made peace with the Sussexes' commercial trajectory. Netflix deals, Spotify contracts, and Markle's lifestyle brand As Ever were preferable, the thinking went, to the years of Oprah interviews and memoir revelations that had kept the institution on the defensive. The Sussex soap opera, it seemed, was finally losing its audience.
However, Australia sort of changed that calculus. King Charles is head of state there, and the crowds lining the streets are doing so because Harry and Markle were once working royals — not because of their streaming deals. The tour looks royal. It is being covered as royal. And it is generating revenue in ways the Palace explicitly sought to prevent. In contrast, Princess Diana, who wielded more global influence than almost any royal before or since, never once attempted to profit from it.
