Meghan Markle seeks ‘clean slate’ on Instagram after ‘Duchess Difficult’ year

The symbolism Meghan Markle chose for her stunning New Year’s Day back to Instagram after five years it couldn’t be more obvious.

In classic black and white images is a video, allegedly shot by Prince Harryshows the Duchess of Sussex, barefoot and wearing a casual, flowy white shirt and white Capri pants. She runs toward the Pacific surf near her Montecito home on a wintry day. She laughs playfully and uses her famous calligraphy skills to write a cursive “2025” in the sand.

Meghan’s new Instagram profile picture also shows her in another, sunnier beach photo, wearing a slip-style cotton dress that’s also very white. She also wears a big smile, as well as her only adornment, an elegantly simple designer necklace – which the Daily Mail said sells for $15,000. A day after its launch, the single-handled @meghan Instagram account had amassed 830,000 followers.

PR experts told the Daily Mail that the beach photos and all-white outfit were clearly chosen to show “purity” and a desire for a “metaphorical clean slate” in 2025 – after a challenging few years for her public image.

“The all-white attire screams ‘purity of reinvention’, while the ‘2025’ etched into the sand conveniently doubles as both a literal time stamp and a metaphorical clean slate,” Mark Borkowski, a top UKPR expert told the Daily Mail.

“Meghan has gone for the classic cryptic performance art on Instagram,” Borkowski continued. “It’s a PR textbook example of someone signaling a new era, designed to intrigue and mystify.”

“It’s a subtle power play that simultaneously promotes curiosity and establishes control,” he added.

In the coming year, Meghan is expected to relaunch her personal brand with her Netflix cooking show and her American Riviera Orchard lifestyle company.

In true influencer style, Meghan could also use her Instagram account to generate income, with companies paying up to $1 million to be advertised in one of her posts, the Daily Mail reported. There is “no reason Meghan couldn’t earn that kind of fee,” PR expert Eric Schiffer told the Daily Mail.

The past year has not been kind to Meghan’s brand. Since being branded a “grifter” when she and Harry were dropped by Spotify to only produce her 12-episode Archetypes podcast, Meghan has faced scathing reports from the entertainment industry about staff turnover and trademark issues with American Riviera Orchard, as well as renewed allegations in The Hollywood Reporter and Daily Beast that she is “Duchess Difficult”, “the demon boss” and “terrible” to work for. Celebrity editor Tina Brown proclaimed in the fall that Meghan has “the worst judgment in the world,” while media critics ripped the “tone-deaf” Netflix series, “Polo,” which she co-produced with Harry.

The New York Post believed that Meghan’s return to Instagram could be her way of wresting back control of the narrative surrounding her public image. Deadline also said that her new account will allow her to hit back at all the online trolls who made her and Harry decide to leave social media in 2020. Notably, Meghan does not allow people to comment on her new beach notice.

As a Hollywood TV actress, Meghan was an avid user of social media as she drove her The Tig Blog, described as “a hub for the discerning palate – those with a hunger for food, travel, fashion and beauty.” She closed The Tig in 2018, shortly before marrying Harry and joining the British royal family.

To promote their work as a senior royal couple, Meghan and Harry launched their wildly popular Sussex Royal Instagram account in April 2019. Their account reached a record 1 million followers within six hours of its launch.

But the couple suspended the Sussex Royal account around the time they left royal duties in 2020 and moved to the US.

Meghan expressed reluctance to return to social media because of the “almost unbearable” online abuse she said she faced, Deadline reported. She and Harry have also called on social media platforms to strengthen content moderation policies, saying some apps could harm young people’s mental health.

Two years ago, Meghan teased the possibility of returning to social media in an interview with New York Magazine’s The Cut confiding to the reporter, “You want to know a secret? I’m coming back … on Instagram.”

Nearly two years passed before Meghan launched an Instagram account for American Riviera Orchard in March, teasing her brand’s luxury coastal Central California aesthetic in “family, cooking, entertaining and home decor.” as Elle reported. Soon after, she had some of her famous friends post photos on their social media accounts showing that they had received limited edition pots of American Riviera Orchard strawberry jam.

Since then, not much has come out officially about the American Riviera Orchard. The Instagram account only displays images of its logo, while the brand has been mired in a trademark battle with the US Patent and Trademark Office.

Most recently, the Oregon-based company that sells premium, gold-foil-wrapped Harry and David pears filed a claim with the patent office, saying the name, American Riviera Orchard, was too similar to “Royal Riviera,” the trademark that earned the company’s founders for the fruit they grow in the Rogue River Valley.