In the second episode of With Love, Meghan—Meghan Markle’s new lifestyle show on Netflix—Mindy Kaling has a confession. “Meghan, I want to ask about your lewk,” she says. “Your fashion is one of my favorite things.
After some back and forth about what a “lewk” actually is, Markle gives her a rundown. Her striped sweater is Jenni Kayne, her knit top is Loro Piana, and her linen pants are Zara. (Kaling gasps.)
“Sometimes I will look like, where’s the coat from,” Kaling says of her fascination with Markle’s style. “[Then] go to maxmara.com—it’s already sold out.”
“So silly,” Markle says, smiling.
With Love, Meghan is a lifestyle show. In it, Markle makes avocado toast for herself, skillet pasta for her friends, and rainbow-shaped fruit platters for her children. She stuffs gift bags for an imaginary birthday party, arranges flowers, and makes homemade candles. She says things like “Love is in the details!”, “In pursuit of joy, not perfection!”, and “Do something that scares you a little bit!” Yet despite everything going in and out of the oven, the reviews for With Love, Meghan have been lukewarm. Or in the case of the Times of London: ice cold.
Part of the issue is the setting: Markle sets her show at a Montecito farmhouse that is not her own. It’s understandable for security reasons—and to be fair, most cooking show hosts don’t use their real homes for filming. But it lends an air of inauthenticity to the whole thing. She stages a child’s birthday party with no children; similarly, she invites her friends over for game nights and dinner parties at an unoccupied home. And part of the issue is aesthetic: the elegant California energy Markle wants to emulate is already (and very visibly) mastered by Gwyneth Paltrow, as well as brands like Flamingo Estate.
All this to say: maybe don’t watch for the lifestyle tips. Like Kaling, maybe watch for something else entirely… the fashion.
It’s no secret that Meghan Markle can sell clothes. While a working royal, whatever she wore to her engagements would often fly off the shelves afterwards—like a pair of jeans by the small Welsh company Huit Denim in 2018. “When Meghan Markle wore our jeans we had the world s press on our doorstep,” Clare Hieatt told the BBC. In time, this phenomenon became known as the “Meghan effect.”
Even after they moved from England to California, the Meghan effect continued. In Lauren Sherman’s Puck newsletter, Line Sheet, the journalist revealed that a Posse dress Markle wore that sold on Moda Operandi became the e-retailer’s bestselling item in units… ever. Meanwhile, blogs like What Meghan Wore and Instagram accounts like @meghansclosetchronicles boast avid followings.
Why do Meghan’s clothes have such a cult fascination around them? Maybe, as Markle herself tells Kaling, it’s because she has a “high-low” style. On With Love, Meghan, she wears luxury designers like Loro Piana, Emilia Wickstead, and Ralph Lauren. But she also wears more attainable brands like Dôen and La Ligne. (Just today, she was spotted in their Lee Shirt and Lee Pant while out to lunch with Serena Williams.) A classic Markle outfit? When she paired a Sezane button down ($120) with jeans and Hermès Oz mules ($1300).
Yet it’s more than that. The foundation of American style has always been sportswear: when European houses were busy producing haute couture gowns in the 1920s, stateside designers instead experimented with casual separates to fit a more relaxed lifestyle. Historian Richard Martin, who curated an exhibition on sportswear at the Fashion Institute of Technology in 1985, described it as “an American invention, an American industry, and an American expression of style.”
And Markle has always embraced that vein of classic American style. Everything she wears has an effortless element of leisure to it: jeans are straight-legged, trousers wide. Shirts are button downs (linen or cotton) or T-shirts. Her sweaters are cashmere. You rarely see Markle in heels: instead, she opts for mules, sandals, or loafers. It’s always clothes you can move in, live in, for hours on end.
There’s also little to no peacocking. Markle mostly embraces a neutral palette of white, cream, and navy. (Take that aforementioned outfit that Kaling loved: the Jenni Kayne sweater is oatmeal, the Loro Piana top is beige, and the pants are white.)
If we’re using more recent terms, Markle style has a palpable “quiet luxury” vibe. Money isn’t flaunted through designer bags or logos, but more subtly through jewelry or her leather goods—look closely, and you’ll nearly always see a Cartier watch and Juste Un Clou necklace. Those aforementioned shoes, meanwhile, are often Hermès or Yves Saint Laurent.
But the thing about Markle’s style is that there’s a timeless, rather than trendy, air about it. Which is important. We’re living through a luxury slowdown: according to Vogue Business, the global luxury market lost about 50 million customers in 2024. The exception is brands that focus on quality—people will buy a pair of jeans, but only if they know it will last them a long time. It’s called the “flight-to-quality” effect: “In tough times, consumers buy less, but buy better,” writes Vogue Business’s Laure Guilbault. Markle’s own way of dressing—in clothes, shoes, and accessories that are basic enough that they won’t fall victim to the trend cycle—is perfectly in step with the flight-to-quality phenomenon. Perhaps the Meghan effect has a longer shelf life than you might think.
