Meghan Markle may be ‘using her global stage to promote labels’ and rescue languishing Club Monaco after its poorly-received rebrand

As a TV star turned duchess, Meghan Markle knows all too well that the world is watching every time she leaves her Montecito home.

On Saturday evening, the Duchess of Sussex attended a book launch by Oprah Winfrey at the new Godmothers bookstore in Summerland.

For the occasion, the mother-of-two looked stylish in a £315 black collared jumpsuit from Canadian fashion brand Club Monaco.

The brand has been a household name for Meghan for years, after the Duchess developed a love for their pieces while she was still starring in Suits.

Meghan wore their dresses regularly during her time as a working royal, including her one and only Christmas at Sandringham and during her royal tour of South Africa, causing them to sell out online quickly.

Meghan’s recent support will undoubtedly be a lifeline for the brand, which had already had a difficult few years before Covid even hit.

After being sold by Ralph Lauren in 2021, Club Monaco is in the midst of a challenging rebranding and is now trying to reposition itself as a more affordable alternative to The Row and Toteme.

In this article, FEMAIL investigates how Meghan is using her star status to save one of her most beloved brands.

Struggling in a competitive market

Club Monaco was founded in 1985 by Canadian designers Joe Mimran and Alfred Sung. The duo wanted to create a ‘better base’ for their customers.

The brand’s first store was in Toronto, where Meghan lived for six years while filming Suits. In 1999, the brand expanded to the U.S., Europe and Asia when it was acquired by Ralph Lauren Corporation.

The following year, the brand launched its own home accessories brand Caban, which lasted only six years until Ralph Lauren pulled the plug.

In the 2010s, the brand experimented with different types of shopping experiences to boost sales in its struggling stores.

In 2013, the company was one of the first to convert part of their store into a coffee bar to attract customers.

Five years later, they partnered with Hamptons Hotel Ruschmeyer on a pop-up – and former CEO Francis Pierrel told Fast company that their e-commerce sales increased by 20 percent.

Sudden sale by Ralph Lauren after ‘losing tons of money’

However, sales in physical stores started to decline and so the brand decided to combine men’s and women’s clothing in stores.

After Francis refused to provide sales figures, he insisted: “This has increased the productivity of the stores.”

According to Doing business in fashionInsiders claimed that Club Monaco had struggled in the years leading up to the pandemic and was “not well positioned to weather” the lockdown.

In May 2021, Ralph Lauren Corporation suddenly announced that Club Monaco had been sold to the private equity firm Regent for an undisclosed amount.

Patrice Louvet, CEO and President of Ralph Lauren Corporation, said in a statement: “Club Monaco has been an important and valued part of the Ralph Lauren family for the past twenty-two years, and we are grateful for the many contributions the brand and team have made to our company.

‘As we increasingly focus on our core brands, we want to ensure that the Club Monaco brand is also well positioned for long-term success.

‘We are confident that Regent is the right home for Club Monaco to realise its full potential, as they can leverage their strategic and operational expertise to continue Club Monaco’s growth.’

‘The designs are like you would see them in a dirty, informal corner’

Following the sudden sale, Courtney O’Connor, Club Monaco’s new Chief Merchandising Officer, hinted at the poor state of the brand’s finances in recent years.

Speaking with Women’s clothing dailyshe explained, ‘For [Regent]The first year was about stabilizing the business — they wanted to make it profitable again.

‘Club Monaco suffered a lot of losses under Ralph Lauren. They wanted to make a profit within a year.’

That same year, the company closed its flagship store in Vancouver after 25 years. According to Style DemocracyThe annual rent was a whopping $361,000 per year.

However, the Club Monaco team still has a lot of work to do after years of ‘confusing’ customers.

Neil Saunders, managing director of GlobalData Retail, told Business of Fashion: ‘The brand is in disarray. One minute it’s high-end and the next it’s something you see in a scruffy casual corner.’

With their recent rebranding, Club Monaco attempts to hark back to the golden age of refined basics from the 90s.

But in March of this year, Jessica Ramírez, senior research analyst at Jane Hali and Associates, said the brand remains as lost as ever.

The expert said: ‘It was a very nice brand when we knew it had quality, we knew it had design, we knew it was trendy and the price was very good in relation to the market value.

“After Ralph Lauren sold, it just lost its way. The design element isn’t there anymore, per se. The quality isn’t there anymore.”

However, Courtney O’Connor says the brand is now placing more emphasis on sourcing quality materials to compete with brands like Toteme and The Row.

Experts have also noted that the brand appears to be taking inspiration from ’90s “It Girl” Carolyn Bessette Kennedy, who also appears to have influenced Meghan Markle’s style.

As the brand attempts to win back its core customer base, Meghan’s recent appearance in a £315 jumpsuit will no doubt come as a welcome endorsement.

When she heard about the boost in sales the brand got from wearing one of the items, everything changed in the way she [Meghan] and then looked at putting together an outfit’.

She explained to the NYT that when she knows there will be a “global spotlight” on her clothes, she will “support designers who [she has] ‘really good friendships with, and smaller, emerging brands that haven’t gotten the attention they should’.

After Meghan hit bookstores, the jumpsuit sold out online.

In August 2018, the Duchess wore her £400 Shoanah dress to Charlie van Straubenzee’s wedding, which sold out within hours.

The brand proudly wrote on Instagram at the time: ‘The beautiful Meghan Markle in our Shoanah dress at a wedding in Surrey, England today – which also happens to be her birthday. Wishing her lots of love and lots of cake!’

Meghan also wore the brand’s Dremah dress during her tour of South Africa in September 2019, where she introduced her son Archie to Desmond Tutu.