There's no question that Meghan Markle has enviable style. From her luxury looks to her more affordable pieces, the Duchess of Sussex's dedication to fashion has been on display in both her own sartorial choices and her charity work. The world has certainly taken notice because Meghan Markle was 2019's most powerful dresser.
According to a study by Lyst, a global fashion search engine and style tracker, Markle topped the list of the most influential dressers. The organization focused on sales, news coverage, searches, and social media posts to compile its list of power dressers (which also included Billie Eilish, Zendaya, and Timothée Chalamet), and Markle came out on top.
The organization reports that according to its stats, searches for Markle's style and how to copy it surged by 216% in 2019. However, the report didn't just center on web searches and coverage of the Duchess of Sussex's style as a whole. Lyst also evaluated the ways brands were impacted when she wore their clothes. The Duchess' Club Monaco dress from the royal tour of South Africa caused a massive 570% spike in searches for the brand. Even Markle's most affordable items saw a spike. Her J. Crew skirt that she donned at a breakfast meeting in Cape Town marked a 102% search increase for the classic brand.
While Lyst's look at Markle's overall impact proves that the Markle Effect is, in fact, real, fans of the Duchess have only to try and shop her looks to discover just how powerful her style opinions are.
Just last month, Markle wore a burgundy monochromatic ensemble to a roundtable discussion in gender equality for the One Young World Summit in London. The look marked the second time the Duchess had worn her leather Hugo Boss pencil skirt, but it was her Joseph sweater that flew off the shelf resulting in a sellout despite it's $200 price tag.
The sell-outs didn't begin in 2019 despite her just topping Lyst's round-up this year. The Duchess of Sussex has been indirectly boosting brands' caché since she and Prince Harry began dating. Before she was even British royalty, Markle was making fashion waves. In one of she and Prince Harry's first appearances together, the future Duchess wore the Everlane Day Market Tote and a pair of distressed Mother denim to the 2017 Invictus Games in Toronto.
The tote and the denim sold out nearly immediately after Markle wore them and continued to be popular. The bag even became so well-known that Everlane created a flat based on the design. As for the the Mother denim, the jeans ended up with a 400-person waiting list.
Clearly, the world's interest in Markle's style isn't slowing down, and with 2020 around the corner, there's even more Duchess style moments on the way
