One of my favorite social media things is when someone provides receipts with a comment of “this you?” I’ve only been on the receiving end of a “this you?” one time, and it haunts me to this day (I made a stupid tennis prediction, lesson learned). Well, the Daily Mail just this-you’d the Duchess of Sussex. They had to go back TEN YEARS to find the receipts, all to ask “this you?” about candles. I’m not joking. You know how Meghan’s As Ever brand sells $64 candles? Well, in 2016, Meghan said that expensive candles are “obnoxious.” Honestly, I’m sort of impressed by the maniacial effort it took from a crack team of fixated derangers and the Daily Mail, all to get this well-earned “this you?” The problem is that, in 2016, Meghan specified a number: $100. Again, she’s selling $64 candles right now.
Meghan Markle branded expensive candles ‘so obnoxious’ before she began flogging her own As Ever range inspired by Prince Harry and their children. The Duchess of Sussex insisted that selling candles for more than $100 would go against her own ‘girl next door’ business ethos.
Speaking on stage in 2016, the year she started dating Prince Harry, Meghan said she wanted to market items that the majority of people can afford to buy.
‘There are no $100 candles on my site – that’s so obnoxious,’ she said to an audience as she promoted her now defunct blog The Tig. ‘I just want things on there that you can have. And I want people who understand that ethos. I’ve always crafted it [The Tig] as “aspirational girl next door”, like, you can aspire for it but totally attain it too.’
But ten years on, her critics pointed out that she is currently selling her own scented candle set for more than double the $100 price tag she dismissed as ‘obnoxious’. Meghan’s $256 (£190) ‘Signature Scent Collection’ is now for sale on the As Ever website.
Critics have dug up the unseen video of the Duchess criticising sites selling expensive candles. Speaking to an audience at the Create & Cultivate conference in Atlanta in October 2016, she said her blog The Tig was ‘my baby’ and going to expand.
‘I didn’t want MeghanMarkle.com. I don’t want this just to be me. I want this to be a community much greater than that.’
She described The Tig as having ‘evolved into an amazing community of inspiration, support, fun and frivolity’.
Meghan said she was looking for someone to help her run her blog and expand it. However despite her expansion plans, she closed The Tig in 2017, shortly before announcing her engagement to Harry. A decade on, Meghan has returned to lifestyle with her own brand.
What I love most about this is… it’s not even a contradiction or some kind of exposed hypocrisy. In 2016, Meghan was very specific: I’m never going to make you pay $100 for one candle. And she’s not. You can buy one of her signature candles for $64. The only way you’re paying more than $100 is if you’re buying one of the candle SETS with multiple candles. This isn’t the gotcha they think it is! It’s also a funny “this you?” because Meghan was fully building her lifestyle brand a decade ago… which means that this was always who she was and is. It’s a reminder that Meghan just picked up where she left off.
Incidentally, Meghan introduced a new product last week: As Ever matches, to light your As Ever candles. Unfortunately, the matchbox is not sold individually, it’s tied to various candle bundles.
Photos courtesy of Instar, As Ever’s Instagram. Screencaps courtesy of Fortune’s YouTube video.
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Well, they’ve thoroughly read the trump playbook: you can never go too low.
If only they went through Peg and Kan’ts shit with a fine tooth comb like they do with Meg. Just think of the dirt they could find there which is probably way worse than a damn 64 dollar candle!!
Meghan didn’t like a $100 candle ten years ago, since then we have had galloping inflation.
Meanwhile, what’s more obnoxious than forcing kitchen staff to boil eggs for Prince Charles to eat for breakfast, and dump them by the dozen, so that hs 3 minute eggs were just right for his finicky palate.😵💫😵💫😵💫
I think it would also be worth noting that a candle that cost $100 in 2016 would retail for $139 today, adjusted for inflation. So…more than double the cost of As Ever candles. Lol.
This is the exact comment I was writing when yours came on!
I was just about to post this exact same thing
I did the same calculation! In 2016 dollars, TWO of Meg’s candles would have cost just under $77.00, or $38.40 per candle, to be precise.
Plus, the 256 dollar item she’s currently selling? It’s a set of FOUR candles, one of each of As Ever’s current fragrances, plus a nice limited-edition box of matches.
Inflation is real, corporations and billionaires are ruining us all, the Monarchy is years past its sell-by date, and the Fail should be put to the torch.
The desperation. This is so dumb. Meghan is not selling a candle for $100. At least the press is forced to admit that Meghan was in the lifestyle space before she met Harry. The press and royalists have a tendency to pretend that the idea for AsEver came out of nowhere and that Meghan has no experience in this field.
Oh my goodness you don’t have to buy any of her products! Why do these people care how much it costs? Also, I hate to break it to them but inflation has definitely made things more expensive in 2026 than they were in 2016. And those candles still aren’t $100.
I wouldn’t begrudge a company in 2016 that said that they would never charge more than $400 for one of their phones, charging more now with the price of semiconductors, and transport, right now. The desperation to make her into some sort of liar when you don’t have to buy anything that she sells at all is so bizarre to me. You could just ignore her.
This also tells me she’s selling a lot of those 64 dollar candles or they wouldn’t be so pressed. Their narrative has completely changed about As Ever in the last few weeks, to Meghan thinks Harry is a bum because she is making all the money.
The derangers want the sussexes to have a star is born scenario where the wife works. Derangers are very desperate and cannot stand to see the sussexes be successful
Omg. 64 does not equal 100. This is typical deranger logic.
Apparently math is not their strong suit.
Nothing is their strong suit. Not math, logic, honesty, integrity, writing, nor sane and normal behavior. They’re a pack of desperate and pathetic idiots.
not at all. this is kind of pathetically hilarious.
And even if she was selling $100 dollar candles (or $139 adjusted for inflation as has been pointed out. So what?
You’re not going to believe this, but I have actually change my position on some things I believed and did a decade ago. Shouldn’t be allowed I know.
I mean Charles told us Camilla was never going to be called queen…..
And as far as I’m concerned, she never will.
She’s always going to be Not Diana to me.
Just checked As Ever’s website, and the $260 set is for FOUR candles plus matchsticks. Single candles are still, as Kaiser says, $64. What’s effing wrong with these people?
If I could reduce all of my expenses and bills to the level they were hovering at in 2016, all of my outgoings would be about — conservatively — 35% lower than they are now. Inflation is a self-propelling phenomenon, which you learn when you study economics, insofar as expectations of inflation generate inflation. It feeds on itself, it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. Since 2016, we’ve had Trump’s election, an assault on the Federal Reserve, a war in Ukraine that generated massive shocks in the cost of heating and energy that fed into general inflation, a food pricing shock, Covid-19, and a global government effort to expand the money supply in truly terrifying ways to stop us from plummeting into a pandemic-triggered recession. So, yeah, prices have gone up a bit. Jesus.
They will forever lose it that she’s making millions and doesnt’ need to come back.
And this is the crux of the matter. She’s free from them and they hate it. They wanted her to stay to be punished forever for having the audacity to be a Black duchess.
I probably wouldn’t have bought the As Ever candles but I did just because of Meghan and I felt assured that given her sense of taste, that I would love how they smell and I do. But yeah, I generally wouldn’t spend more then $25 on a candle and mostly I’ll buy it for the container it comes in. 🙂
I always loved nice smelling candles, and was willing to spend in the $25 range for one that smelled good. Then I received a $100 candle as a holiday gift and I learned the reason for the price difference. It was pine scented, but the smell was so rich, and so deep, and permeated the whole house and lasted so long… that I understood the difference between $100 candles and the rest very quickly.
It’s all about the quality of the fragrance. It’s like the difference between buying the eau de toilette and the eau de parfum of your favorite fragrance. They can both be the same scent, but one is deeper, richer, and lasts longer. So when I want that deeper effect, I burn the more expensive candles. For a nice short pop of fragrance I use one of the cheaper ones.
It shouldn’t be a surprise that they can’t do math. But the sleight-of-hand involved with trying to convince people that a candle “set” is the same as a single candle, well, that’s a choice. And we’re not even considering inflation, here.