I’ve written this elsewhere but I think it’s really important people understand this. There are loads of people, like me, who post links for items worn by royals and other celebrities. I cannot overstate how frustrating it is to constantly see people being accused of “merching”

and being in contact with said celebrities or royals in order to underhandedly promote clothing or items. It would be a complete waste of any celebrity of any real standing to contact bloggers and sites do this when we basically do it for no cost to them and the brand already.

How do we get paid? I make no secret I use affiliate links - it’s illegal for me not to disclose in the UK. Other people do the same, and also carry advertising on their sites. If you’re one of the first to ID, you’ll be one of the first to scoop up clicks and affiliate sales.

I used to do this before I had affiliate links because I loved the thrill of being first to find something - and also sometimes because I wanted to get there first to buy it before it sold out!! So the race to ID an item is very competitive and brings its own various rewards.

Sometimes you ID an item in seconds because we ALL were given the brand by an RR in a tweet, sometimes you recognise the piece, or it looks reminiscent of a certain brand. There is a lot of knowledge behind the scenes that goes into IDing an item. You need to have knowledge of:

1) fashion vocabulary to enter the correct terms into search engines, 2) brands and their aesthetic styles, 3) brands most often used by certain celebs for certain types of clothes, and 4) which retailers carry which brands and items.

Sometimes you get lucky: I found Kate’s 2017 McQueen clutch in seconds by typing “heart clasp box clutch” into RewardStyle. Her red Xmas faux fur scarf was the first result in a Google search of “red faux fur collar”. It was an ASOS link so I knew she’d have access to that brand.

When royals do tours many bloggers research ahead to find likely brands to expand their knowledge. When designers launch new seasons of designs, bloggers check over the range and make notes about what items suit each lady’s sense of style. So much goes on behind the scenes.

Do celebrities ever get given free clothes and get paid to wear items? Of course. All the time. Does that advertising work? Yes - in part because people like us post links. Does it require any kind of communication between celeb and blogger? Absolutely none whatsoever.

I don’t know if Meghan gets paid to wear clothes and honestly I don’t care if she does. But one thing is for sure - there is literally no benefit to her whatsoever to do extra work on top of wearing something. Why would she post affiliate links or have a website?

It’s honestly a lot of work and pays peanuts compared to what you could theoretically earn from brand endorsements. And like I said, she doesn’t need to tell anyone what she’s wearing most of the time because we can find out using our base of knowledge.

In summary: saying Meghan “merches” via any blogger or website is ridiculous and inflammatory and is really insulting to the people who work very hard to ID items and share information with their followers. And it would benefit no one in particular to do. So why would she bother?

I hope this explains how IDing works, why people do it, why it sometimes happens so fast, and why Meghan doesn’t have secret contacts with bloggers to promote things. She doesn’t need to. It’s really that simple.

And on a final note, if Meghan (or Kate!!!) were secret marchers, they’d never wear certain brands again - like Zara or Massimo Dutti - because they’re not on affiliate sites and you can’t earn money from sales. End of!

Merchers... not marchers. It’s hard to march secretly and I’m not even sure why you would bother.