The usual suspects are still trying to “take down” the Duchess of Sussex’s As Ever brand. They want As Ever to fail and it’s killing them that AE was probably one of the most successful startups of 2025. Well, this week, As Ever’s Instagram posted a sweet “hosting tips” reel from influencer Olivia McDowell. Olivia has highlighted As Ever’s products on her social media before, and this has the feel of As Ever contacting her specifically for her brand of sponsored content. Well, Tom Sykes is on the case! From The Royalist’s “Meghan Markle appears to be shifting strategy with her As Ever brand, slowly stepping back from putting herself at its center… Kind of.”
The Duchess of Sussex made a different kind of post this week on the brand’s Instagram. Instead of featuring herself, a video showed lifestyle influencer Olivia McDowell assembling perfect cucumber sandwiches, spreading As Ever jam on a croissant, drinking As Ever tea, and lighting an As Ever candle, all in what was captioned her “3 summer hosting tips.”
At the same time, As Ever’s Instagram Story couldn’t quite stay away from its founder. Meghan linked to her personal account, where she shared a “photo dump” captioned “Springing into summer,” including images of her lying on the grass, nature shots, Archie playing with Prince Harry, onion-cutting, Lilibet’s T-shirt, and a hug with her husband, but, notably, no As Ever content.
This appears to be the first time the Duchess has featured someone other than herself using the products she sells, and it comes just a few days after a report suggested that website traffic has not kept pace with inventory levels this year.
“Bringing in other personalities to carry your brand is running the classic playbook,” Warren Johnson, founder of PR and influencer agency W Communications, told The Royalist, adding that “the team need to stop the As Ever brand from being a personality cult.”
Johnson noted that similar strategies have been used by Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop and Jessica Alba’s The Honest Company. “It’s a smart move. The question will be whether the team stick with the strategy for long enough to see the benefits, or whether we see another erratic pivot feed the ‘Diva Duchess’ tag that they are desperate to overcome,” he added.
…While a brand like Goop has collaborated with figures including Kourtney Kardashian and Stella McCartney, Meghan has chosen Olivia McDowell as one of the first personalities to represent her brand. McDowell has around 295,000 Instagram followers (fewer than As Ever and Meghan) and regularly encourages her audience to shop items she herself purchases, with her most popular recommendations including a shoulder bag priced at $1,920 and a tote bag for $570.
In a way, this aligns with Meghan’s own product inventory, which is also far from inexpensive. While a decade ago the Duchess described $100 candles as “obnoxious,” As Ever now sells a set of four candles for $256. The Sussexes’ “favorite” jams are available as a $36 bundle of three, while flower sprinkles are priced at $15. Maybe the Duchess is trying to find an appropriate market for these products, and McDowell, who has quite expensive tastes and an aesthetic lifestyle, fits that narrative.
“This appears to be the first time the Duchess has featured someone other than herself using the products she sells…” No it isn’t? While Olivia’s video might be the first one which is explicitly some kind of sponcon collaboration with As Ever, both Meghan and As Ever have highlighted other people using AE products or tips learned from With Love, Meghan. Those photos and videos were usually posted on Instagram Stories last year, because I remember that the As Ever team highlighted a bunch of really good ones of normal women trying out various products and one-pan pasta and what have you. Basically, they’re desperate to use every single Instagram post as evidence of Meghan’s “failure” when really, this is just business as usual for a growing brand. Meghan isn’t “stepping back” – she’s the face of her brand, she’s running the show and she’s the one choosing the aesthetics and the sponcon. Also, it looks like Sykes needs to get his eyes checked because Meghan did include a jar of jam in her photo dump on Tuesday as well (see below).
Olivia McDowell x As ever 🌸
Olivia’s summer hosting tips with Meghan’s As ever brand! 😎☀️⛱️#AsEverByMeghan pic.twitter.com/o0IYgxNPiD
— ChrisBaronSmith (@ChrisBaronSmit1) June 8, 2026
Photos courtesy of As Ever’s Instagram.
What is he talking about? She has attached a bunch of people making dishes from With Love Meghan, or making dishes using flower sprinkles, the jam, the shortbread mix, etc. And she has been sure to highlight when they’ve won blind taste tests for the wine and for the jam. She has always utilized others using her product, for promotion of As Ever. If they are paying or contracting specific people now, that’s just a natural progression for promotion in a business. “Look- all these people in this space use my product too!”
The constant drum beat to insist that As Ever is a failure, is what assures me most that it isn’t. And their insistence is so insidious, because it’s not like they’re just noting that something isn’t successful. They literally want this woman to not be able to support herself. Imagine being so despicable that you feel like you’re justified in hoping that someone can’t take care of themselves and their children? Because there’s nothing controversial about selling jam, tea, and wine. They just don’t want her to be able to earn any money.
Tom Sykes can suck my titty. He and that loser from Newsweek are patently desperate for any & all Meghan content. (Made up or not). Every time a product drops her stories are full of links to people’s jam breakfasts and teas.
I will say….that photo with the terracotta strawberry pot is beautiful
LMAOOOOOO I’m screaming!
Hahahahahahaha!
I love your opening line. We need more call outs like this!
Why would you want to grant him such an honour???
What a moron. What sponcon actually shows is a brand or product are successful enough that a high-level content provider is willing to partner with it. Whether Olivia got an up-front fee or a fraction of sales, her reputation is on the line too
He has reached a level of clownery heretofore unseen. The mind boggles. I guess Amazon, Microsoft, Sephora, and every other corp you can think of are floppity flops since they all do sponsorships with influencers who align with their brands.
In the photo of Meghan lying down on the grass there are jars of honey in the basket. These people are so desperate for clicks.
Exactly.
Two whole pics with Meghan with her food products, in her latest “springing to summer” photo series, and still psycho Sykes is blatantly lying to his not so bright audience.
Sykes lifestyle brand is malicious stupidity. I prefer tea, jam and candles.
Her *entire* body of work — whatever you want to call it, her Netflix show, her brand roll-out, her blog, her product placements, her gift baskets to friends, her social media mutual tagging, her launch party, her Instagram reel — have *all* featured other people, in literally every single placement and product drop. Whether it be her kids, her friends, her mother, her husband, her mentors, her peers… it’s all a village. That’s the point. It’s occurred to me that when these people are being wilfully obtuse, they’re also quite literally obtuse. So it’s a blend of bad faith ignorance — feigned ignorance — and genuine ignorance. And the kicker is untangling that blend. I’m really glad she’s never attempted to untangle it, cause it’s a doozy. Dude needs to get a new hobby — like a life.
@YankeeDoodles
🎤 Mic drop
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Really, it’s like he’s living in a cave, never having actually seen anything of Meghan’s first hand, only repeating what derangers tell him.
The thing is, yes, they DO want her to fail, but they KNOW that the brand is successful.
They are banking on being flooded with comments from fans and ordinary people calling them “stupid” and “liars” for printing such obvious tripe. It’s a strategy for engagement. That’s their only goal at this point. They are increasingly desperate, yes, but they are at the point where they don’t care that people know that they are full of it, as long as they are getting the clicks. The thing is, I don’t think most people are buying what they are selling anymore? People are laughing at them, but not clicking on the rubbish pipe dream failure narratives that they are publishing.
I bought several of the multi-pack jams a while back and am still working through them, that’s why my traffic at As Ever has slowed down and I’m certain I’m not the only one.
He needs to take a Business 101course. Does he not understated brand collabs and the whole influencer culture? These people live in a silo where they want something to go a certain negative way, then look for ways to justify it. He actually sounds clueless. There is absolutely no reason for anyone other than the founders and investors to be so obsessed with the day to day minutiae of a new brand, especially a small niche one. She’s not manufacturing cars or making a mass market brand.