Meghan Markle was reportedly left furious after an embarrassing blunder involving her sister-in-law, the Princess of Wales, and high-end fashion designer Roland Mouret. The Duchess of Sussex is said to have fallen out with Mouret, who had sent the former actress a selection of outfits after she began dating Prince Harry. The pair had been friends for some time.
Designer's instructions ignored
Roland, 65, asked a member of his team to send items he had personally set aside to Kensington Palace, instructing the staffer to "leave them there as long as she [Meghan] wants them." He also told the staff member not to "follow up on it and do not talk about it to anyone at all, here or outside."
However, after Meghan and Harry's relationship became public, the staffer who sent the clothes "decided, in an honest attempt to be efficient, to call Kate's stylist at the palace and ask for Meghan’s dresses to be returned."
Meghan's furious response
In an excerpt of his memoir, I Am Roland Mouret: The Butcher's Boy Who Dressed The World, serialised by The Times, the designer claims the Duchess was "furious." Roland wrote: "Meghan was furious and called me." He went on to claim that she said: "You don't realise what you've done, you've embarrassed me!"
The designer apologised directly to Meghan, saying that he understood she wanted things handled "privately". However, she is alleged to have responded: "You know I can never wear your clothes again."
Roland was left baffled by the "logic of this," adding that Meghan's decision not to wear his brand again was hers, "not the palace's, not anybody else's, I don't think anyone else cared," he said.
A year later
Just a year later, he reached out to the Duchess after spotting her wearing what he claimed was "a cheap high street copy" of one of his designs. "I messaged her: ‘I can understand if you don't wear my stuff, but if it’' to wear a cheap copy then that's ridiculous. Come back,'" he said. Meghan responded via text message saying: "I think I should come and see you."
Meghan and the Princess of Wales have had a strained relationship in recent years. During a bombshell interview with Oprah Winfrey, the Duchess claimed the then Duchess of Cambridge made her cry in the days leading up to her wedding, not the other way around, as was originally claimed.
During the 2021 interview, a year after she and Prince Harry stepped down as senior working royals, Meghan claimed that she and the Princess clashed over the dresses her flower girls, including Princess Charlotte, would wear. "It made me cry, and it really hurt my feelings," she said. Meghan said, "There wasn't a confrontation. I don't think it's fair to her to get into the details because she apologised, and I've forgiven her."
"It was a really hard week of the wedding, and she was upset about something, but she owned it, and she apologised, and she brought me flowers and a note, apologising." She went on to say that Kate was "a good person". The Mirror approached a spokesperson for the Duchess.
