Her persistence paid off. From subtly securing her attendance at the Balenciaga show to gracing the cover of the latest issue of Harper’s Bazaar, Meghan Markle is trying to convince the world that she is a fashion icon and is really, really relevant

Meghan Markle is operating on a fame deficit. This is so even after attending the Balenciaga show in Paris with a post-invitation invite. To make up for it, she needed to ensure that the public is fully aware that she is all the highlights of fame, with none of the tiresome humility, and to showcase an aspirational image only the editorial team of a fashion magazine can supply. So, she landed on the cover of one. Not Vogue—the throne room of cultural supremacy—but Harper’s Bazaar, the glossy vestibule where consolation prizes are handed out as Trick or Treat. It’s the kind of cover that whispers ‘better than nothing’ while pretending to shout ‘icon’. A temporary elevation achieved, no doubt, but one that ensures she’ll remain precisely where she’s always been: waiting for the phone call from Vogue that will make this current cover finally, legitimately, mean something.

But just putting her on the cover is not going to generate buzz other than that she found a willing magazine. So, like the bona fide duchess she is, she went for the meme-able: makeup-free, making it a bold, authentic move for her, and the first such dare for Harper’s Bazaar. You get to see Ms Markle’s natural self, wrinkles all glorious, freckles in full bloom. She made sure to show skin that is not botox-irrigated. She offers a sort-of-smile, an external expression of intestinal fortitude (of course, a woman of noble rank suffering from status hunger does not fart). Her hair is possibly pulled back with her own bare, moisturised hands, as if she is about to go attend to her honey-producing bees. This is Montecito nonchalance, the unappreciated kin of Mar-a-Lago narcissism. If you can’t be groundbreaking, at least be real.

Ms Markle, during the photo shoot. Screen shot: harpersbazaarus/Instagram

On the cover, Ms Markle is outfitted in Dior. The clothes have to be iconic, so the Harper’s Bazaar team chose a signature Dior suit of the season for her, specifically the tuxedo style, designed by Jonathan Anderson. The jacket has a massive keyhole on each side of the front, waist down. With her seated, the ends pool around her hips like a dark, expensive spill. The left of the slender sleeves sprouted a fist that was clenched, betraying a nervousness the rest of the pose attempts to deny. The Dior suit is meant to signal gravitas, but instead it slumps under the weight of misalignment. Ms Markle has a rather fraught relationship with Dior, marked by rumors, refusals, and public distancing. Back in 2023, media outlets speculated she was negotiating to become the “new face of Dior.” The brand quickly denied this, stating there had been no contract or recent contact with her. It was immediately interpreted, quite correctly, as the highest form of a snub.

It’s almost tragi-“?comic: Harper’s Bazaar wanted to frame her as a fashion stateswoman, but what we see is a former actress trapped between two incompatible aesthetics—Dior’s Parisian hauteur and Montecito’s lifestyle influencer ease. The tailored fabric doesn’t offer her credibility other than a dark spotlight on her fierce, yet failing, urgency to be adopted by a fashion elite determined to keep the door locked. It is a breathtakingly expensive demonstration of how little a brand name can buy when genuine acceptance is not for sale. However authentic the pose and the bare face are intended to be, it is a front that failed before the shutter even clicked; she and Dior are no heirs to the Hepburn/Givenchy legacy. A feat of classic, understated iconography is impossible when one’s ambition remains perpetually filtered through a lens of Californian crass.

Who’s trying to be who? Left: Princess Diana shot by Patrick Demarchelier in 1990. Photo: Patrick Demarchelier. Right: Meghan Markle shot by Malick Bodian for Harper’s Bazaar

The entire spread reads less like a natural icon’s editorial and more like an extremely expensive, meticulously rehearsed audition for the permanent role of ‘Fashion Royalty’—a role for which Harper’s Bazaar remains merely the understudy stage. But the crowning achievement of poor form is Ms Markle’s transparent homage to the style of a far more legendary personality: Princess Diana. In one black and white photo, she posed like here late mother-in-law. Princess Di’s seated‑on‑the‑floor portrait is iconic because it was unstudied, vulnerable, and deeply human. Ms Markle, conversely, looks self-conscious, unsure what to do with her fingers, and curls her toes. Princess Di’s photo shows the clear rapport between she and photographer Patrick Demarchelier, whom she trusted deeply, while the palpable rift between Ms Markle and her photographer Malick Bodian were as vast as she and her in-laws. Instead of camaraderie, there is distance.

The ho-hum quality isn’t accidental; it’s the inevitable outcome of trying to graft “authenticity” onto couture. Similarly, the editorial appears to be a way of laundering her public image into something palatable. It said, “Meghan seems to lead with affability” after asking, “How do powerful women flex? Do they lead with deference or dominance?” It is not clear what side Ms Markle showed during the interview, but it was likely just one side. In March 2021, The Times published allegations against her for bullying by former palace staff, detailing the claims. Buckingham Palace announced it would launch an investigation into the circumstances outlined in the article, but when the inquiry concluded, chose not to divulge the findings, saying they would remain private for confidentiality reasons. How does one square the two?

In the third paragraph, we are told that “a golf cart pulls up, the gravel crunching beneath its tires. ‘The Duchess of Sussex,’ someone in the scrum announces.” Was this a film set? But the little anecdote is pure theatre—a ritual of self‑coronation. It is, crucially, a conceited ritual because it dramatises hierarchy where none exists. In America, duchess means nothing except when used to describe satin. So instead of intimacy, you get pomp; instead of authenticity, you get ceremony. It’s the pathetic version of a red carpet, with a title shouted into silence to remind everyone (and herself) that she still requires recognition. And don’t we forget that.