In January 2019, during the Duchess of Sussex’s first pregnancy, she made a visit to her patronage, Smart Works. It was a great event for her – she met some of the women being helped by Smart Works and she helped style them for their job interviews. I think she sat in on some interview prep sessions, and she looked through the available clothes and accessories. Maybe that was when she came up with the idea for the Smart Works capsule collection, one of her wildly successful initiatives while she was being held hostage in the UK.
As you can see, Meghan was dressed in a simple black dress and trench coat. We heard, at the time, that her earrings were from Kimai, and they were a pair of artificial diamonds. What we didn’t know until now is the backstory of how Meghan came to wear those earrings. The story was told by the Belgian jewelry designers on the UK show Dragon’s Den, which is the UK’s version of Shark Tank. Small business owners go in and “pitch” for investment, and that’s when the Meghan story was revealed:
Meghan Markle accepted £1990 worth of diamond earrings from a female-founded jewellery business, the owners have revealed. The Duchess of Sussex, 42, was sent the jewellery by artificial diamond brand Kimai when she was still a working member of the Royal Family in 2019. The mother-of-two wore the brand’s Felicity earrings, which are sold separately for £995, when she visited the charity Smart Works’ headquarters in London.
It comes after Prince Harry revealed in his memoir that his wife would keep freebies sent to her at Kensington Palace and distribute them among her staff – despite the Royal Family usually sending back unsolicited gifts.
Earlier this month, Kimai’s founders Sidney Neuhaus and Jessica Warch appeared on Dragons’ Den where they boasted about the Duchess of Sussex wearing their designs. The founders – who were looking for a £250,000 investment for a three per cent equity stake in their business – revealed how the royal endorsement boosted their business, just a two months after they first launched.
They explained: ‘We’ve launched without investment, and then two months after our launch we got Meghan Markle to wear our pieces, which enabled us to grow the revenue significantly, and from there we raised $1.2 million.’
Steven Bartlett – who ended up investing in the business – questioned the duo on how they managed to get the Duchess of Sussex sporting their jewellery.
Sidney said: ‘Cold emails.’ Jessica then added: ‘We’re big believers in cold emails!’
Despite also peaking the interest of dragons Deborah Meade, Sara Davies and Peter Jones, the pair ended up choosing Steven. The entrepreneur said he was convinced to make an offer after seeing that Meghan Markle had worn their designs.
‘The moment you told be about hounding down Meghan Markle, you had me,’ he said.
As you can see, the British papers are picking this up and running it as a negative, like HOW DARE Meghan accept freebies, blah blah blah. Kate accepts freebies too, it’s just that the British media doesn’t climb up her ass when she does it. Instead of talking about the bloody freebies, talk about how Meghan received a cold email about lab-grown diamonds and she gave such a huge boost to female entrepreneurs!! She gave them millions in free advertising just by wearing their earrings once.
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