Duchess of Sussex unveils new brand American Riviera Orchard

A vintage-style video of the Duchess of Sussex cooking and arranging flowers was posted on Instagram on Thursday.

The Duchess of Sussex lives in California (PA) (PA Wire)

The Duchess of Sussex has launched a new business venture with an Instagram teaser.

A vintage-style video of Meghan cooking and arranging white hydrangeas and roses was posted to the new American Riviera Orchard Instagram account on Thursday.

The brief video is set to Nancy Wilson’s I Wish You Love and closes with the the brand’s logo, American Riviera Orchard, written in fine gold script above the word Montecito – a celebrity enclave near Santa Barbara in California where the Duke and Duchess live.

Little information has been released about American Riviera Orchard but a trademark application filed on February 2 this year shows the company wishes to offer downloadable and printed recipe books, table wear, textiles, and jams and marmalades, according to the United States Patent and Trademark Office website.

The account had 100,000 followers just three hours after its first post.

The launch comes as the Prince and Princess of Wales face intense scrutiny, after Kate publicly apologised and confessed to digitally editing a family portrait taken by William and released by Kensington Palace to mark Mother’s Day.

Meghan has not run an Instagram account since the Sussexes stepped back from royal life four years ago.

Previously, they ran a joint account @sussexroyal but announced they would stop posting in March 2020.

On Thursday Harry and Meghan also released a video congratulating the latest recipient of the NAACP – Archewell Foundation Digital Civil Rights Award, for pioneers working in the intersection between social justice and technology.

In the clip, posted to the Archewell website, the grinning duke and duchess tell computer scientist Dr Joy Buolamwini that she won the annual prize.

Dr Buolamwini founded the Algorithmic Justice League, which Meghan describes as “an organisation leading the way to overcome racist and sexist biases in AI systems, especially when it shows up in policing, in education, and in healthcare”.

The duchess added: “She recently wrote ‘the rising frontier for civil rights will require algorithmic justice’, and we could not agree more – Dr Joy is an expert and inspiration and she is so deserving of this honour and many more”.

The Archewell Foundation is the couple’s non-profit and it set up the award with NAACP, a US-based civil rights organisation working to end racial injustice.