Meghan Markle And The $1,700 Dress: Why Celebrity Borrowing Etiquette Is Back In The Spotlight

The Duchess of Sussex, Meghan Markle, has once again found herself at the centre of headlines after allegedly keeping a designer gown from a past photoshoot, an emerald green Galvan 'Ushuaia' dress valued at $1,695 (approximately £1,350). The one-shouldered Galvan dress first appeared in Variety's 2022 Instagram Reel, when Markle was being promoted as the magazine's cover girl.

Fast forward to 2025, and the same dress resurfaced while Markle was promoting her Netflix show, With Love, Meghan: Holiday Celebration. According to NewsNation, the incident reignited claims that the celebrity-turned-royal has a habit of taking items from her photo shoots without returning them.

Markle's Alleged Habit of Taking Photo Shoot Items

Rumours about Meghan's borrowing etiquette during photo shoots sparked last year after veteran journalist Vanessa Grigoriadis discussed the issue in Andrew Gold's Heretics podcast. She claimed that a few clothes that were lent to Markle for a photo shoot reportedly went missing, and it has happened several times.

Grigoriadis referenced Tom Bower's book Revenge: Meghan, Harry and the War Between Windsors, which claimed that when Markle did a campaign for the Canadian clothing store, Reitmans, 'she forgot to leave behind the Aquazzurra shoes' she wore during the photo shoot. Coincidentally, she was latter photographed wearing the same shoes for her official engagement portrait with Prince Harry.

Grigoriadis stressed that celebrities or high-profile figures should never take home the items they used in a photo shoot.

'Those clothes are being lent by top designers of the world, perhaps jewellery. Jewellery is incredibly expensive, right? The kind of jewellery that celebrities wear on the red carpet is, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars,' the journalist said. 'And (Bower) reported that Meghan, at the end of that shoot, the crew that was there was sort of surprised because she had some high-heeled shoes on that no longer seemed to be in the room for the shoot, right?'

She added that while such incidents are not unheard of, they remain frowned upon in the industry.

Other Celebrities Who Allegedly Crossed the Line

Markle is not the only celebrity accused of blurring the rules of borrowing. An article from The New York Post published in 2013 listed some of the well-known figures who did not return, or destroyed, a loaned designer item.

Model-TV personality Janice Dickinson was accused of taking home borrowed jewellery worth approximately £15,800 after wearing it for The Reality of Fashion, The Reality of AIDS runway benefit show. She has since denied the claims, and most of the missing jewels were returned after some time.

Singer Katy Perry allegedly 'lost' a couture Zuhair Murad dress worth thousands of pounds that she wore during the 2010 MTV Movie Awards. Her publicist, Ruth Bernstein, insisted that the Firework singer was not aware that the gown was missing, suggesting it was a stylist issue.

Actress Lindsay Lohan became notorious for her treatment of loaned items. Some allegedly went missing, while others ended up torn or completely unusable when returned to the designers.

Silence from Meghan's Camp

Despite the renewed scrutiny, Markle's representatives have not released a statement about the Galvan gown and other issues related to the loaned items that went missing from photo shoots. For now, the emerald dress continues to underscore the fragile line between Hollywood glamour and etiquette in the fashion world.