Meghan Markle dumped her original brand idea, only to attract a copyright battle

On the latest episode of her new podcast Confessions of a Female Founder with Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex details how the rebranding came to be, insisting that she came up with the brand’s new name way before it launched as American Riviera Orchard in March 2024. “I had secured As Ever as a name in 2022,” she told her guest, Kadi Lee, who owns the Highbrow Hippie Salon in Venice, Los Angeles.

Markle strategically dished the details about As Ever in the presence of Lee since the two have been close friends since meeting in 2020, following the Duchess’ move to California with her husband, Prince Harry, after the couple stepped down as senior royals. It seemed she wanted Lee to corroborate her story with the way she phrased her succeeding statements.

“As everything started to evolve last year, and bringing in a partner (Netflix) the size that it was, it was just so interesting. You , I said, ‘I like American Riviera as an umbrella,’ and then be able to have verticals beneath it. And maybe have the ‘Orchard’ really small. But when that’s not feasible … suddenly it became this word salad. I didn’t love that so much.”

Markle’s obvious attempt to repair the brand’s image

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Since Markle did not get the response she was hoping for, she abruptly pivoted to expressing how much she loved her original moniker for the brand. “I was like, ‘OK, let’s go back to the thing that I’ve always loved. Let’s use the name that I protected for a reason that had sort of been under wraps,” she said before pulling in a new narrative about how she and her team worked quietly for the rebrand, without acknowledging that the original name was heavily criticized when it was soft-launched. Or, how she was allegedly reduced to tears due to the poor reception, as reported by The Mirror.

“We were able to focus in the quiet and put our heads down and build on something that no one was sniffing around to even see about. It was really just helpful to have that quiet period. It was just really, really helpful to have that quiet period,” she said in her final attempt to repair the brand’s image, which is much needed considering the rebrand further spelled more trouble for her by attracting a potential copyright battle.

When Markle revealed the new name and logo of her business, royal watchers and internet sleuths had a field day after noticing the uncanny resemblance of the logo to the official symbol of a small village in Mallorca, Spain. Additionally, the name was similar to a Chinese fast-fashion company called ASEVER. Markle’s team did not respond to the plagiarism claims over the logo, but they had to drop clothing from their product lineup to their patent application in the U.S.

So, is there a new brand launch, this time purely focused on clothing, from Meghan in the future? Since that was already in the pipeline, it is highly probable. Hopefully, this time, Meghan and her team to do their homework to sidestep any avoidable pitfalls.