MEGHAN’S SPARKLING SHOW OF RESPECT FOR DIANA
THE Duchess of Sussex ended her maternity leave yesterday to launch a charity fashion range – and declared: “I’ve got to get back to the baby. It’s feeding time.”
Meghan wore two items from the collection with a bracelet and pair of butterfly earrings owned by her late mother-in-law Princess Diana.
Her first official engagement since Archie’s birth in May was to launch the Smart Set collection of five pieces costing £19.50 to £199. Proceeds will go to one of her charities, Smart Works.
And for every item bought, another will be donated to the organisation, which gives jobless women career coaching and interview clothes.
The project brings together leading British names Jigsaw, John Lewis & Partners and Marks & Spencer, along with Meghan’s designer friend Misha Nonoo.
One item – a £109 John Lewis tote bag – sold out online even before Meghan, 38, arrived on the roof garden of its flagship store. The royal, in a £125 Misha Nonoo shirt and £120 Jigsaw trousers, said: “As women, it is 100 per cent our responsibility, I think, to support and uplift each other.
“To champion each other so we aim to succeed, to not set each other up for failure but instead to really be there rallying round each other and say, ‘I want to help you’.”
She added: “This is the kind of work I’ve been doing for a really long time and to be able to do it here – in my new home of the UK – means quite a bit to me.
“It’s also the same vein of work my husband and I will continue doing, really strong communitybased projects.”
The American also shared some life-coaching advice she offered to young women during counselling sessions at Smart Works.
“What’s the phrase? Be yourself: everyone else is taken.”
‘Be yourself, everyone else is taken’