Meghan Markle's Luxury Brand Tied to Odd Website

Click through to AmericanRivieraOrchard.com and you'll be brought to the landing page for Meghan Markle's somewhat murky new luxury lifestyle brand. Go to the seemingly related UK domain for that site, however, and you'll find yourself instead on a portal imploring you to donate to a food bank. It's a new head-scratcher tied to the Duchess of Sussex, though most of the mystery has since been solved.

• Meghan's project: Per the Independent, Markle announced her brand last month, though with sparse details. It later came out that she'd be hawking lifestyle products such as recipe books, textiles, tableware, artisan jams, and the like.

• Food bank plea: The website ending with .uk features nothing more than an animated bubbles graphic and the words "Forgiveness. Permission. Please donate to the Trussell Trust." There's also a JustGiving fundraising link for the hunger charity, which had raised almost $12,000 as of Friday morning.
• Explainer: Citing the Daily Mail, the Daily Beast reports that a "devoted Kate stan," referring to Markle's sister-in-law and alleged foe Kate Middleton, was the one who scooped up the UK domain and has nothing to do with Markle's brand launch. That person writes on the JustGiving page, "not meghan. hope meghan wouldn't mind. thoughts with catherine. x."
• Food bank reaction: "The Trussell Trust [is] grateful to people who put their time and energy into supporting our work to end the need for food banks in the UK," the food bank noted in a statement, per the Independent. "The charity is not connected with this website domain and [has] no knowledge of who set it up."

(More Meghan Markle stories.)