Gwyneth Paltrow’s told us to ‘steam’ our vaginas (a ‘combination of infrared and mugwort steam cleanses your uterus', to clarify), while Kourtney Kardashian’s has said that candles can help to ‘mask cellulite’. In the weird, wacky and occasionally wonderful world of wellness, there’s very little that hasn’t already been said. Yet here we are, just three months into 2024 and already we have the latest celebrity-fronted lifestyle brand to enter the conversation: welcome, Meghan Markle’s American Riviera Orchard. This is officially the era of celebrities capitalising upon their personae and revealing a curated peek behind the gilded gates of their lives to those eager to see what it would be like to exist as them.
Paltrow created the blueprint that many of her fellow A-listers would soon follow when she launched Goop from her kitchen table in 2008, which began as a weekly newsletter in which she shared her go-to wellness tips. The business is now valued at more than $250m (£196m) and encompasses everything from beauty to clothing, holidays, podcasts and a Netflix series. Four years later, Honey star Jessica Alba dipped her into the field with the launch of The Honest Company, which sells immune-boosting supplements and antibacterial cleaning sprays, which is now estimated to be worth $550m (£430m). Then came Kardashian, who debuted her offering to the wellness world in 2019 with the launch of Poosh, a website that hosts wellness-focussed editorial content that is also shoppable (Poosh has since collaborated with Goop). This was swiftly followed by actor Ashley Tisdale’s offering, Frenshe, and then one year later Kate Moss made her first foray into the world of wellness with Cosmoss, which launched last autumn and was billed as something for 'the soul and the senses'.
FIND OUT MORE ON ELLE COLLECTIVE
It's believed that Markle's American Riviera Orchard will focus on home, garden, food, and general lifestyle content, and it will eventually branch into selling a variety of home goods, such as cookbooks, foods, and kitchenware. Another trademark application further revealed that American Riviera Orchard will sell an array of home goods, including cookbooks, jams and spreads and tableware staples such as cutlery, table linens and glassware.
Of course, the celebrity-owned brand space is a direct reflection of the times in which we live. It's a way for famous faces to monetise their popularity, which makes sense given the rabid parasocial relationships many fans have developed with their favourite public figures. Fans are demanding more lifestyle content from people they admire, as the prevalence of TikTok series, such as Spend The Day With Me and Get Ready With Me, have proliferated. The hashtags have been viewed 58m and 201b times on the app, respectively. But there’s a catch. If a celebrity’s star begins to wane, or if their currency begins to dip, where does their 'lifestyle-for-sale' money-maker go? How do you market a lifestyle that people could start to feel indifferent to as much as they do a decreasingly popular celebrity?
‘"Celebrity" is no doubt an enormous driver of short term success, just look at Kylie Cosmetics, Skims, and Hailey Bieber’s Rhode,’ Emily Austen, founder and CEO of award-winning PR agency Emerge, tells ELLE UK. ‘However, it doesn’t guarantee long-term success. Celebrities can earn millions of pounds from posting on social media, and drive huge sales as a result of their cult following, but in order for Meghan to make money from Instagram, she will need an engaged, interested audience with purchasing power.’
Austen surmises that Markle will need to have created products that are ‘actually needed’ and that are accompanied by ‘strong imagery and messaging that actually connects with those viewing it, rather than inauthentic posturing'.
‘I wouldn’t expect a business like this to see a profit certainly in the first 12 months, but it is unclear at this time whether there has been any external investment, who is actually running the business, or what the launch plan is,' she adds.
Proof that the world of celebrity lifestyle brands isn’t all plain sailing, as with any business no matter the public status of its founder, can be seen with the shuttering of Blake Lively’s lifestyle platform, Preserve, in 2015. The brand was only live for one year before it closed, while Chrissy Teigen's cookbook and kitchenware collection, Cravings, was dropped by stockists, including Macy's, Target and Bloomingdale's in 2021, after problematic tweets of hers were unearthed from 2012. After the tweets resurfaced in 2021, Teigen published an apology on X, formerly known as Twitter, saying she was 'ashamed and completely embarrassed' by her actions. 'Not a lot of people are lucky enough to be held accountable for all their past bulls*** in front of the entire world. I'm mortified and sad at who I used to be,' she wrote.
Paltrow's pioneering Goop hasn't been immune from scandal either. After making one of its most audacious claims that 'Yoni eggs' — ping-pong-ball-sized jade spheres designed to be inserted into the vagina — could prevent a person's uterus from sagging, regulate periods, balance hormone levels, and prevent incontinence, its claims were disproved, and the company ended up having to pay $145,000 (£114,000) in civil penalties for misleading customers. In an interview with the New York Times, the actor defended Goop’s decision to continuing selling the eggs, saying that the lawsuit was the result of it being 'a little company curating and buying third-party brands that were making claims around their products.'
Then there's the fact that, in today's economic climate, there is something difficult about expecting people to invest in non-essentials. The Financial Conduct Authority estimated in December 2023 that almost 8m people are struggling to meet their basic financial obligations, while the average household's disposable income dropped by 3.7% last year alone. With real-life stressors far beyond our control, our minds - let alone our bank balances - are hardly able to wrap themselves around Goop's goat's milk cleanses or Poosh's Paleo recipes, no matter how beneficial they might be. Wellness has historically been a world reserved for the wealthy, but with our priorities being forced to reshuffle, what people will and won't be willing to spend their hard-earned money on remains unclear. As such, any business proposition in today's cost-of-living crisis feels like it carries a dark, looming shadow of risk more so than ever before.
Of course Yoni eggs, vagina steams, cellulite-masking candles; you name it, and there's clearly an appetite for it. Self-optimisation is seen as the panacea to the ills of our modern world, and if anything is apparent it's that in the world of wellness, where famous faces go, the rest of us soon will follow. As a female entrepreneur and philanthropist, Markle could attach her name to anything and it would be successful, and it goes without saying that wherever her Montecito lifestyle offering takes audiences, we will be right behind her. The real question though is for how long we'll all follow.
ELLE Collective is a new community of fashion, beauty and culture lovers. For access to exclusive content, events, inspiring advice from our Editors and industry experts, as well the opportunity to meet designers, thought-leaders and stylists, become a member today HERE.
Naomi May is a freelance writer and editor with an emphasis on popular culture, lifestyle and politics. After graduating with a First Class Honours from City University's prestigious Journalism course, Naomi joined the Evening Standard as its Fashion and Beauty Writer, working across both the newspaper and website. She is now the Acting News Editor at ELLE UK and has written features for the likes of The Guardian, Vogue, Vice and Refinery29, among many others.
