Call me crazy, but I actually enjoy Tom Sykes’ descent into full-on deranger lunacy. I’ve read Sykes’ stuff for years, back when he covered the royals exclusively for the Daily Beast. Back in the day, he actually had some decent exclusives and he could reveal more about how the royal sausage is made because he worked for an American outlet. But ever since he started his Substack and his YouTube channel, everything about his royal analysis has changed. The multiple rants about Meghan’s “Taco Bell” kitchen were the most recent peak of his new anti-Sussex perspective. But his new Substack piece is pretty wild.
So, there’s a new, San Francisco-based kids’ clothing brand called Lil Olives. On Lil Olives’ site, they’re using a child model with red hair and the child is posed with her face mostly shielded from the camera. The aesthetic is absolutely borrowed from the Duchess of Sussex’s Instagram. Or, as Sykes hysterically writes: “Meghan Markle’s Brand Faces Speculation as Lilibet-Like Image Appears in Doppelgänger Clothing Brand; Questions have emerged online after a Substack post suggested a child model used in a children’s clothing brand bore a resemblance to Princess Lilibet.” Yes, Sykes wrote a multi-page rant about how a kids’ clothing company used a ginger child as a model. I’m not joking.
Meghan Markle’s As Ever brand appears to have a doppelgänger, with strikingly similar branding and imagery that bears an uncanny resemblance to photos of her daughter.
Award-winning journalist Paula Froelich may have unearthed something that would have been better left unnoticed for the Duchess of Sussex. On Sunday, writing on her Uncensored Substack, she highlighted similarities between Meghan’s Montecito-based As Ever brand and San Francisco children’s clothing label Lil Olives, founded by Danya Ghutta.
Froelich compared the mission statements of the two brands, suggesting both read as though they may have been AI-generated, and noting that automated analysis flagged the texts as “almost exact” clones of one another, differing only in the products they promote.
But it’s the visual overlap that has drawn the most attention. A child model featured in Lil Olives’ “Buttercream Bloom Dress,” whose face is mostly hidden, except for one image in sunglasses, was flagged as having a near-identical look to Princess Lilibet, who has appeared in many photographs on Meghan’s Instagram, including a post last week for her fifth birthday.
The questions practically write themselves: is Lilibet being used as inspiration for another brand? Is this an AI-generated likeness? Is one brand borrowing from the other? Or is it simply an extraordinary coincidence?
The Royalist has reached out to both brands for comment, but Lil Olives has since appeared to signal at least a partial response by removing the images in question from its website following Froelich’s post, only adding to the list of questions and speculation.
…Lil Olives was created in August 2025, suggesting its founder may have been influenced by As Ever, which was launched a year earlier in 2024. That, in turn, has prompted the question of whether any of that inspiration extended beyond branding and into imagery connected to Meghan’s daughter.
To be clear, there is no evidence that Lil Olives used Lilibet’s likeness, and it would be inappropriate to speculate on that point given the legal and ethical sensitivities involved. It has also not been established that Lilibet modeled for the brand. If either were ever proven, it would obviously elevate the situation significantly.
How can another little girl with red hair exist? I thought Princess Lili Diana was the only ginger girl in the entire United States!!! IT MUST BE AI! Meghan must have allowed Lili to model for a kids’ clothing company! Whatever this is, it’s bad news for Meghan, because EVERYTHING must be bad news for Meghan! Meghan thought that she had the only redheaded child in existence, well, joke’s on her! Meghan thought that she had cultivated an exclusive Millenial-core aesthetic which no one would ever copy, joke’s on her again!
PS… You can see the Lil Olives site here. They have tons of images of kids modeling their clothes and very few of the pics even seem inspired by Meghan? These people are so weird.
Photos courtesy of Meghan’s Instagram.
What a creepy man. Good grief. Lmaoooo.
Tom Sykes hasn’t met a conspiracy theory yet that he could ignore.
So a site that was created more than a year before another one is somehow suspect, because of similarities — perceived or real? So just because the sites sound similar, it’s AI — especially the site that came first? Is he OK? Or, more precisely, is that award-winning journalist well, or just extremely bored?
At least Syko didn’t imply that the Sussex kids, in this case Princess Lilibet, is a rented kid, a child actor…
Give him time…
@Nanea Sykes does not have explicitly to mention the conspiracy theory about Lilibet and Archie. Sykes reporting and amplifying Paula Froehlich’s (who is imo one of the worst derangets) “findings” is enough to feed into the derangers worst conspiracy theory about Lilibet.
The funniest thing is that Sykes after speculating about a child model’s likeness to Lilibet he ends his article with “…it would be inappropriate to speculate on that point given the legal and ethical sensitivities involved.” Sykes is covering his a*se but who is he kidding.
Is he in the Epstein files, cuz I’m getting those vibes from him. Why is he studying little girl clothing sites?
So the site got harassed and took down a picture of a kid with red hair? Is that what just happened?
This guy is a straight up weirdo. His obsession, and that is what it is, has crossed over into very worrying status. He’s following her to different countries, he’s complaining about her kitchen, and now he’s upset because a company obviously decided they like the aesthetic that she has for her instagram, and copied it to boost their own profile? And what’s with the implication that Meghan stole this from them, when she’s posting her child and they are replicating her posts? Just so he can make it seem like she’s unoriginal? A thief? A liar, even though she hasn’t said anything?
Their desperation for engagement so that they can make money, but also for acknowledgment from Harry and Meghan is so pathetic. I can just see their meltdowns as they’re sitting here filming these YouTube videos, and writing these Substacks out. They can’t believe that she’s successful, happy, and doesn’t need their approval. And instead of being editors of trendsetting and It person appointing magazines any longer, they’re elbowing each other for relevancy, and on a Merry-Go-Round with each other for scoops and exclusives.
Sykes is gasping for content since he got kicked out of the rota a year ago. He has to feed his substack audience of haters and hate bots something. So here we are.
He’d go completely apoplectic if he met my dad’s side of the family with all those red headed girls running around!
I don’t think British tabloid readers and their Greek chorus cohort of “journalists” fully grasp that Americans are not obsessed with the Sussexes in the way that Brit tabloids are. Like, Americans think of the couple and their kids in that fond, fuzzy kind of way that represents the filter through which they view most celebrity / philanthropist / activist / royals which is to say those categories are kind of interchangeable. There tends not to be room in the Brit tabloid imagination for such harmless and relative flukes as sheer coincidence. Whereas Americans tend to see Occam’s razor rather than scheming, like, odds on, that’s just kids being kids, sometimes they pose for the camera, sometimes they look away. Oy vey.
Someone should check on him… he’s unhinged.
Love the last line – “To be clear, there is no evidence that Lil Olives used Lilibet’s likeness…” Yep, no evidence, just talking out of his ass again.
Took a quick look at the site – it veers more toward Little Miss Pageant than “Run Free Thru the California Grass.”
I just glanced at that site too. Now I gotta go floss my teeth before they rot. Pageant, indeed – a whole collection of flower girl dresses to get your kid right on track for her bridezilla future. (shudder)
Sykes was sometimes interesting in the days before he got kicked out of the rota almost a year ago. He published screenshots of the whatsapp meltdown by BP comms guy Tobyn Andreae, and IIRC he even weighed in on the Rose Hanbury rumors, all in his DB column.
Since then, though, it looks like he’s trying to earn a living from hate bot subscriptions to his substack. He never has anything new (his bizarre re-interpretations of Roya’s columns don’t count as “new”), unless it’s what KP clearly feeds him, and KP feeds him lies. I mean, who needs *multiple* columns about Meghan’s kitchen or the York sister’s peppercorn rents? Nobody, we got it the first time. He has to feed his substack haters and hate bots, though, and he seems to be gasping for content.
Sykes actually traveled to Geneva to report on Meghan’s trip (but he gave Kate’s Italy trip a pass, lol). We really need to know who paid for that.
Could Sykes actually be on KP’s payroll, under that huge “social media” line that KP hasn’t revealed for several years?
“elevate“?
I checked out the Lil Olives site. Apparently Lil Olives are never dark-skinned? The BRF would probably approve.
#OlivesSoWhite
I just looked at the Lil Olives website. It’s little girls in cute dresses with a background similar to Meghan’s estate. There is ZERO reason for outrage. None. Nada. Zilch. The desperation of Sykes is incomparable. It’s just sad.
Why doesn’t Sykes direct some of his vitriol towards Kate who tried to style-jack Meghan for her ‘Arly Yars’ initiative right down to the font she used?
Between Sykes and Wooten’s meltdowns, I don’t know who is going to get committed to the psych ward first!
This is crazy. Tom Sykes is a full-fledged deranger.
He’s mentally unstable and his Meghan obsession has him arguing in circles with equally mentally unhinged people. How does As Ever brand have a doppelgänger when the image is of a child wearing a dress? Meghan’s As Ever brand isn’t a child’s clothing line and like all clothing lines, they have people dressed in those items to sell them. There isn’t anything new or nefarious about it, it’s common clothing line advertising. And why would it be better left unnoticed for the Duchess of Sussex for another brand that sells something entirely different from herself to advertise like every other similar company does? Someone buying a dress from that company isn’t going to decrease sales for As Ever. And regardless of who the little redhead girl was it wouldn’t “elevate” anything because Meghan isn’t the only mother who has a redhead daughter and no one besides these obsessed crazy people who stalk Meghan would think there is anything to “elevate”.
The clothing company took it down. How sad.