As Ever: A Masterclass in Selling Pretty, Tasteless Nothing
As Ever:
A Beautiful Shelf
of Nothing
A soft-focus inventory of jam, honey, tea, cookies, flower sprinkles, and a $64 candle named after Meghan's birthday. We went through all of it.
When Meghan Markle launched As Ever in April 2025, we were promised something rare. Sun-warmed fruit. Homemade elegance. The Montecito lifestyle bottled into bite-sized moments of domestic aspiration. The brand description: "a love language." The founder's letter: "an extension of how I love." The candle: named No. 084 after her August 4th birthday, scented with "the signature fragrance that warms Meghan's family home." The price tag: $64.
What followed was a raspberry spread that sold out in under an hour, a wildflower honey described by at least one critic as "the most expensive honey ever produced by bees," a shortbread cookie mix that divided opinion sharply along the line of people who had tasted it and people who had only seen photographs of it, and a website glitch that briefly exposed inventory numbers suggesting approximately $27 million in first-year sales — which is either a commercial vindication or the most revealing accidental disclosure since someone left a trade report on read.
As Ever is not a lifestyle. It is the idea of a lifestyle. The Pinterest board you save at 2am and never actually use. The mood you buy and the problem you do not solve. We went through the whole shelf. We have notes.
The Full Pantry Shelf
Sold out in under an hour on first release. Restocked. Sold out again. The scarcity is either demand or strategy. The jar looked heirloom. The spread tasted like a prettier version of something available at most Whole Foods locations at approximately half the price.
Dry. Crumbly. The texture of something that had been conceptualized in a kitchen but finalized in a focus group. Edible flowers on top do not change what is underneath them. This is also true of the broader brand.
Described as the most expensive honey ever produced by bees by one critic with phrasing so efficient we will not attempt to improve on it. Reportedly lovely. The scarcity felt less intentional than logistical. At some point those two things become indistinguishable.
The Hollywood Reporter's "read between the $14 tea leaves" is the piece of writing about this brand that will outlive most of the products. The teas are fine. Fine is not a love language.
Added mid-2025. The brand's most explicit pivot toward the luxury lifestyle register. Tasteful label. Reasonable wine for the price point. The least interesting thing about it is the wine itself.
Meghan's Instagram described this as inspiring a family's "new Saturday morning tradition." That is a heavy lift for a crepe mix. Most crepe mixes are flour and nostalgia. This one is flour, nostalgia, and a photograph.
The perfect metaphor for the entire operation. Pretty to look at. Useless in practice. Somehow still convinced they are elevating something. Applied to everything. Tasted by no one. Referenced in the Sydney retreat gift bag controversy, which is a sentence that earns its own section.
Named after August 4. Meghan's birthday. The candle does not merely smell nice. It carries a biographical footnote in its product number. You are not buying a scented candle. You are purchasing proximity to an olfactory autobiography. In wax form. For $64.
The Full Receipt
| Product | Stated Purpose | Price | Actual Function |
|---|---|---|---|
| Raspberry Spread | A love language in jar form | $15 | Selling proximity to the myth of Meghan's kitchen |
| Wildflower Honey | Artisanal indulgence | ~$28 | The most expensive honey ever produced by bees |
| Tea Blends | Soft living, steeped | $14 | Read between the leaves accordingly |
| Shortbread Mix | Homemade warmth | ~$14 | A concept that reviewed better in the photos |
| Edible Flower Sprinkles | Elevate everything | ~$21 | Evidence that aesthetics can be applied to almost anything |
| Candle No. 084 | The scent of Meghan's home | $64 | A biographical footnote you burn down in six months |
Small Batch Notes: What the Brand Actually Is
The first product out of the gate was raspberry jam. Not a startling reimagination. Not a flavour revelation. Just jam, with better lighting and more personal mythology attached to it. The jar was lovely. The label was lovely. The opening price point was $15 for a spread that placed itself aspirationally against artisanal competitors while delivering something closer to a premium supermarket offering.
This is not a quality problem, exactly. The products are fine. Some of them are reportedly quite good. The wildflower honey is by multiple accounts genuinely pleasant. The rosé is inoffensive and reasonably priced. The issue is not what is inside the jar. The issue is the commercial architecture built around what is inside the jar — the scarcity mechanics, the biographical product naming, the launch infrastructure that required a Netflix partnership and a television series to function at the scale it launched at.
What happens to the jar when the television series is gone and the streaming backer has departed and the only remaining distribution engine is a direct-to-consumer website and Meghan's Instagram? That is the question the $27 million inventory glitch created but did not answer.
Taste Notes, Unfortunately
A Butter Betrayal — The Shortbread Cookie Mix
Shortbread should feel like a minor crime against moderation. Rich, slightly sandy, aggressively buttery, the kind of thing that makes you feel both indulgent and slightly guilty in a pleasant way. It is a simple product. The simplicity is part of the point.
The As Ever shortbread mix delivered dry, crumbly disappointment dressed in edible flowers and beige packaging. Multiple purchasers noted the texture was off — less like handmade shortbread and more like something that had been designed to look like handmade shortbread while tasting like it had been assembled by committee. The edible flower garnish on top suggested character. The crumb suggested otherwise. The flowers remained decorative throughout.
All Buzz, No Honey — The Wildflower Honey Launch
The wildflower honey was marketed as indulgence, positioned as part of the debut collection, and then failed to materialize at the promised scale. The scarcity of the first release felt less like intentional luxury rationing and more like supply chain underestimation dressed up in limited-edition language. By the time the honey duo gift sets arrived for the holiday collection in October 2025 — embossed keepsake boxes, premium positioning — the original release had taught audiences that sellouts were strategy as much as demand.
Emma Grede, who knows rather more about building consumer brands than most people in the room, reportedly expressed skepticism about the sellout mechanics in an interview alongside Meghan. The specifics of that skepticism were diplomatically phrased. The diplomatic phrasing was noted.
Pretty Leaves, No Legacy — The Tea Collection
The Hollywood Reporter's line about reading between the $14 tea leaves landed so cleanly that it may outlive most of the actual teas. It captured something true: the product category and the price point and the brand positioning combined to create a gap between promise and delivery that was small in commercial terms and large in symbolic ones.
Tea is an intimate product. It involves ritual, warmth, choosing, steeping, waiting. A tea collection from a brand whose stated mission is "an extension of how I love" creates a specific expectation. The teas delivered were fine in the way that most premium-positioned grocery teas are fine. Fine is not a love language. Fine is a flavour profile.
Flower Sprinkles: Decorative Sadness in a Jar
The edible flower sprinkles may be the perfect metaphor for the whole brand and we are going to sit with that for a moment. They are visually appealing, photographically excellent, genuinely pretty in the soft-focus way that everything associated with As Ever is genuinely pretty. They add colour. They suggest effort. They imply that the person who placed them has a relationship with beauty that extends to their condiment shelf.
They were included in the VIP gift bag at the Sydney wellness retreat that cost up to $3,199 AUD per ticket, alongside a $4.50 packet of Funday sweets available at most Australian supermarkets. The juxtaposition was unintentionally revealing. The sprinkles and the discount sweets occupied the same bag. The aesthetic and the substance occupied different universes. That is As Ever in a gift bag.
Candle No. 084: The Biographical Footnote You Burn
The candle costs $64. It is numbered 084. August 4 is Meghan's birthday. The product description notes it is "the signature scent that warms Meghan's family home." The family home is a $29 million estate in Montecito. You are, for $64, purchasing a version of what Meghan's $29 million home smells like, reproduced in wax, to burn in yours.
This is either the most intimate product launch in celebrity branding history or the clearest possible illustration of what "as an extension of how I love" means when translated into commercial objects. Possibly both. The candle reportedly smells pleasant. The biographical footnote is included at no extra charge. It will burn down in approximately six months and need replacing, at which point you may decide whether the mythology is worth the repeat purchase.
"If you sprinkle enough edible flowers over mediocrity, it still tastes like nothing. The flowers are lovely though. They always are."
Product Cards for the Collapse
The shortbread was not the only product whose texture raised questions. The jam's consistency divided opinion between "artisanal small-batch character" and "quality control oversight." At $15 a jar, the latter interpretation is hard to dismiss.
Nothing offends. Nothing surprises. Nothing lingers. The products taste exactly like the aesthetic looks — warm, soft, slightly expensive, and entirely non-committal. A flavour profile that photographs beautifully and disappears completely the moment the camera moves on.
Some early purchasers reported crooked labels and uneven fills. Small things. Not disqualifying. But crooked labels do not whisper heirloom artisanal chic. They whisper early-stage production scaling. The aesthetic was built on perfection. The execution was built on a launch timeline.
The saddest thing about As Ever is the ghost of what it could have been. A brand that looked like Meghan, tasted like her kitchen actually smells, felt messy and alive and real. Instead: a brand that photographs beautifully at golden hour and tastes like aspiration by morning.
"If you sprinkle enough flowers over mediocrity, it still tastes like nothing. Though the jar, it must be said, is beautiful."
The Future of As Ever, If There's Even a Point
The saddest thing about As Ever is not the dry shortbread or the flat tea or the $64 biographical candle. It is the ghost of what it could have been — the brand that existed if Meghan had allowed it to feel human instead of airbrushed. Loud instead of muted. A little messy. A little alive. Something that tasted like an actual kitchen rather than a Pinterest board printed on quality card stock.
The Tig — the lifestyle blog that predated the palace entirely — had that quality. It was warm and specific and occasionally imperfect in the way real enthusiasm is imperfect. As Ever has the same instincts, preserved and protected and managed until they stopped feeling like instincts and started feeling like brand guidelines.
The Netflix partnership that launched it is over. The With Love, Meghan discovery engine is gone. The brand is now operating as it was "always intended" — independently, on its own, with Meghan's Instagram and a direct-to-consumer website as its primary commercial infrastructure. Whether the $27 million first-year figure can be replicated without the streaming launch machine is the only commercial question that matters.
The flower sprinkles are still available. The candle still burns down in six months. The tea is still $14. The myth is still being sold, one beautiful jar at a time. As ever.
You can dress up mediocrity.
You can stage it, photograph it, name it after your birthday, ship it in embossed keepsake boxes, and export it to willing buyers who want to own a small, affordable piece of the Montecito lifestyle fantasy. And for the first year, while the Netflix show is running and the streaming discovery engine is operating and the press attention is at maximum, this strategy works. The sellouts are real. The $27 million is real. The jar is genuinely lovely.
The second year, operating independently, without the machine: that is when the question the jar has always been asking finally requires an answer. Not "what does this look like?" The brand knows the answer to that. "What does this taste like, on its own, without the mythology?"
Disclaimer: This article is satirical and opinion-based cultural commentary. It reflects public product feedback, documented brand analysis, and the specific sadness of expensive flower sprinkles. It is not a factual investigation or personal attack. The jam may be perfectly fine. We are reviewing the architecture, not just the fruit.
