PicoBlog

Fom Tracy Robbins Instagram account.

Happy Sunday! Wishing Queen Elizabeth II a happy, heavenly 98th birthday today. For many of us, when we think of “the Queen” our minds immediately go to QEII. How long will that last? Probably a long time. When I hear news about “the Queen”, my mind still goes to her first. Then it’s a bit of a sad pause, when I remember. I hope she’s dancing today in heaven.

Is Samantha Cohen slowly dipping her toes into discussing her time with Meghan? It looks that way. This could be the start of hearing more from her royal staff. It takes one to start and then others feel bolder. Cohen is so close to the royal family, she attended the Queen’s committal service. She was the Queen’s assistant private secretary for many years and then was given to Harry and Meghan to be their private secretary after their wedding. It was a sign of respect and an honor to have the Queen’s former private secretary on their team. Cohen confirmed she was indeed one of ten palace staff interviewed about bullying claims. And that, basically, no one wanted to work on Meghan’s team after her behavior became apparent to all. “I was only supposed to stay for six months but stayed for 18 – we couldn’t find a replacement for me and when we did, we took them on tour to Africa with Harry and Meghan to show them the ropes but they left (quit) as well while in Africa,” Cohen shared with the Herald Sun, a newspaper in Australia. Cohen refused to elaborate further. It will be interesting to see if we hear anything more. In Courtiers, Valentine Low explained that Cohen had been “harshly treated” by Meghan and warned other staff to document their time with Meghan because she seemed to be setting them up. Wise advice.   

Roughly a month ago, Meghan soft launched the social media for American Riviera Orchard (ARO). With that, she included a landing page which debuted on the company’s website, allowing email signups for more information. Meghan’s in an odd and peculiar place, going from being this enormous worldwide presence to someone who can’t generate a sizeable following on social media quickly. That’s why they are taking it slow. ARO is sitting at just over 600k in followers and that’s taken more than a month to build. For reference, Sussex Royal on IG has 9.1 million followers. Meghan doesn’t have the pull to bring millions of followers quickly, so she needed time to grow her followers. After multiple failed attempts to gather interest in her “Meghan” IG account, even her team could see that ARO on IG was going to take time to grow. They are chumming the waters for followers and attention, soft launching her into the public arena again.

She doesn’t have the support to make a big splash. Meghan and Harry face a very cool climate with the public, even in the US. Indifferent. Numb. Exhausted. That’s how most feel about them. It hasn’t even been one and a half years since their Netflix series debuted and yet, everything has changed.

So, what do we know about ARO and Meghan’s plans to grow it? In 2022, Meghan had her sights on a different brand. Flamingo Estate, a LA based lifestyle and wellness brand, so loved and respected in that space, that Martha Stewart herself wrote the forward to the Flamingo Estate cookbook. Rachel Strugatz, a writer with the media site, Puck, reports that Meghan had many meetings with the founder of Flamingo Estate, Richard Christiansen, in 2022.

Meghan wanted to come in as an “active investor” (meaning she would have a role in the management of the company) along with being the face of the brand. Their talks were so advanced that Meghan had access to the financial records of the company. A source told Strugatz that Flamingo was a “business she was trying to be part of” and Meghan was given “intimate knowledge of the business” that an investor would need. During this time, a stack of Flamingo Estate gardening books worth several hundred dollars, were pictured in a video clip behind Harry in 2022. Ultimately, Christiansen did not want to partner with Meghan and no deal was signed. Puck accuses Meghan of trying to knock off Flamingo after “a potential partnership fell through”.

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