Meghan Markle made fashion news today as she officially launched The Smart Set - a five piece capsule collection alongside Smart Works Charity - and in partnership with Jigsaw, John Lewis and Partners, Marks and Spencer and Misha Nonoo.
The collection - revealed today - aims to equip the Smart Works clients with the classic wardrobe pieces to help them feel confident as they mobilise back into the work space.
Opening up about the exciting new collection, Meghan delivered an emotional speech about how she starting working with the charity.
‘When I first moved to the UK, it was incredibly important to me personally to be able to connect with people on the ground in really important work and one of the places that I went to very early on was Smart Works,’ Meghan announced when unveiling The Smart Set.
‘Now, funnily enough and purely by coincidence it was just a year ago, at this same time that I was working on a project in Grenfell with this woman at a community centre called Al-Manaar, and that’s when we put together the ‘Together’ cookbook. So though this is a year later and obviously this is fashion, not food, at its core these are very similar projects because they’re about women who are empowering each other.
‘[I] have the opportunity to meet them, get to know them, learn from them and then say what can I do in some small way, how can I try to help you amplify this? How can we make this even better, greater and more impactful for the movement that you’re trying to help?’
Going on to speak about the work that Smart Works does and how it is transforming the idea of charity to community, she continued: ‘When we go into our closet as a woman, we say “I’m going to make a donation”, you don’t go through your closet and just toss in a box whatever you don’t care about anymore. That’s charity, as we know it today. Community is going through your closet and saying “this is the blazer that I wore when I nailed my first job interview and got my dream job and I don’t need that anymore because I’m where I want to be”. But if I’m able to share that blazer and be part of another women’s success story, then that’s community. This is sort of how we thought of the Smart Works Capsule collection.’
Concluding her speech, Meghan announced: ’This is the kind of work that I’ve been doing for a really long time and to be able to do it here in my new home of the UK means quite a bit to me. It’s also the same range of work that my husband and I will continue doing, really strong community based projects and this is something that we’ll be excited to be able to share more about next year when we launch our foundation Sussex Royal in 2020.'
The collection – a shirt, trousers, blazer, dress and tote bag – will be on sale for two weeks starting today, aiming to sell enough pieces to give Smart Works the essentials to help dress clients for the whole next year.
