Meghan Markle’s latest Instagram reel—set jauntily to Dolly Parton’s “9 to 5”—was meant to cap a high-octane swing through New York and Washington, D.C. Instead, one prop stole the conversation: a black-and-blue tote emblazoned with the monogram “DS,” widely read as “Duchess of Sussex.” The bag appears repeatedly throughout the montage: perched on a suitcase, trundling down a hallway, hovering in an elevator selfie. For fans, it’s a wink to brand coherence; for critics, it’s “tacky” shorthand for titles-as-lifestyle. Either way, it’s smart social choreography—an object cameo that guarantees screenshots, rewatches, and debate.
The reel doubles as a highlight tape from a packed itinerary. Meghan is shown backstage at Fortune’s Most Powerful Women Summit, toasting flutes, then grinning in an airplane cockpit en route to the next stop. The cadence is familiar: polished, punchy, deliberately intimate. It also collides with her recent insistence—on Netflix’s With Love, Meghan—that her surname is “Sussex” now, not “Markle,” a stance she underlined in a playful on-camera correction of friend Mindy Kaling. The “DS” tote becomes a neat visual echo of that position: if your family name is a title, your weekender can be, too.
Context, however, is everything. The bag surfaces just as Meghan’s wider “PR blitz” invites renewed questions about tone. In interviews, she’s emphasized ordinary routines—school-run friendships, group fitness classes, low-key playdates in Montecito—framing fame as something folded into a communal life. The reel mixes that vernacular with unmistakable gloss: designer tailoring, a cameo of what looks like Ed Sheeran, and a triumphant “24 hours of impact (and fun!).” It’s messaging pitched between access and aspiration—intentional friction for a platform that rewards both.
Supporters argue the outrage is overcooked. Monogramming is hardly novel, and the bag may just as easily belong to a team member ferrying luggage. People magazine, though, framed the tote as a nod to Meghan’s title, reinforcing the narrative that she’s leaning into the Sussex brand after years of recalibration. Strategically, it tracks: in the same fortnight, she fronted women-in-leadership events, clinked glasses with entrepreneurs, and poured her As Ever wine at an A-list, plant-based dinner—images designed to stitch advocacy, commerce, and glamour into a single mood board.
The risk is familiar, too. When every frame is curated, detractors hunt for contradictions: is a royal monogram compatible with “just another person” in a 50-person yoga class? Is a tote with initials any different than a college sweatshirt—personal pride masquerading as merch? The answer depends on where you sit in the Sussex story. To some, the bag is a playful signature; to others, a flashing reminder that titles still do the heavy lifting.
What’s indisputable is the efficiency. One accessory turned a travel recap into a culture-war skirmish, amplified Meghan’s “Sussex” identity claim without a word, and kept her orbit front-page hot across news and social. In an economy of attention, that’s the point: the bag isn’t just a bag—it’s a thesis. Whether it lands as elegant, ironic, or out of touch says less about the tote and more about the audience reading it.
Chris Jackson//Getty Images
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