Meghan Markle vowed never to wear Roland Mouret’s designs again after a member of the fashion house mistakenly asked the Princess of Wales’s team for dresses supplied to her, the designer claims.
Mouret says the Duchess of Sussex was left humiliated when his staff contacted Kate’s stylist at Kensington Palace rather than approaching Meghan or her aides directly. He alleges that Meghan telephoned him in anger and rejected his apology.
“Meghan was furious and called me. ‘You don’t realise what you’ve done! You’ve embarrassed me’,” Mouret writes in his memoir, I Am Roland Mouret: The Butcher’s Boy Who Dressed the World, which is due to be released next week.
According to the designer, he told her the request had been an honest mistake by a member of staff who did not understand that she wanted matters handled privately.
But he claims Meghan replied: “You know now I can never wear your clothes again.”
Mouret says the dispute later deepened when he saw Meghan wearing what he described as a “cheap high street copy” of one of his designs. He says he messaged her: “I can understand if you don’t wear my stuff, but if it’s to wear a cheap copy then that’s ridiculous. Come back”.
He claims Meghan responded: “I think I should come and see you.” Despite the falling-out described in the book, she wore one of his plunging dresses in an Instagram promotion for her As Ever brand earlier this year.
Meghan Markle and Roland Mouret’s friendship
Meghan and Mouret had been close since meeting while on holiday in Turkey in 2015. The designer says they first encountered one another in a hotel lift, when Meghan was wearing a dressing gown on her way to a spa.
“I said: ‘You don’t know me but you do know me in a way. I am Roland Mouret’,” he recalls. Meghan had been starring in Suits, a programme whose makers had used his designs.
The pair arranged to meet at a party that evening and subsequently became friends. Mouret says Meghan later contacted him from Canada, where she was filming, to say she had split from a boyfriend and planned to travel in Europe.
Within months, he claims, she told him she had met someone. When he asked whether it was her “nice European guy”, she replied: “Nice British guy.”
“Even better,” Mouret says he responded. “What does he do?”
He writes that Meghan hesitated before saying: “He’s a prince.” Mouret says he immediately understood that she was referring to Harry, writing: “There was only one British prince. We knew who we were talking about.”
The designer then offered to send clothes for Meghan’s new life, telling her: “You’ll go to a lot of functions, you’ll need clothes. Do you want me to send you some now so that you’ll be ready?”
She replied: “Yes, please.”
Mouret was among the designers tipped to create Meghan’s wedding dress, although she ultimately wore a Givenchy gown. Meghan also wore his designs for public appearances, including when she met former Irish president Michael D Higgins during a visit to Dublin in 2018.
She has previously spoken warmly about the designer, recalling: “This man in a bathrobe said, ‘I’d love to dress you’, I thought ‘whaaat?’ Then he told me who he was and we’ve been friends ever since.”
She also wrote on social media: “Love your dresses to the moon and back, but love you even more #favouritedesigner.”
In contrast, Mouret writes approvingly of the Princess of Wales, for whom he has designed clothes since 2011. Reflecting on Kate’s public role, he says: “Many want to be famous but if Kate could do everything she does, and be married to the man she is married to, without the fame, you suspect she would choose it.”
