Meghan Markle is Gorgeous on a Belated Birthday Outing with Friends
She turned 42 earlier this month and is keeping the celebrations going.


Let the birthday celebrations continue! Her forty-second birthday was on August 4, but it seems the party is continuing deep into the month for Meghan Markle (as it rightly should—birthday months are the way to go). She looked fresh-faced and happy as she joined girlfriends for lunch this week: “Belated bday celebrations w/ these lovely muses,” the account @highbrowhippie captioned the shot on its Instagram story. “missing sweet @sergenormant.” (Normant is the stylist who did Meghan’s hair for her wedding to Prince Harry back in 2018.) In the photo, Meghan is pictured in a black tank top with her arms around friends Cleo Wade, a poet, and celebrity hair colorist Kadi Lee, per Page Six. (Lee’s clients at her Highbrow Hippie salon in Venice, California include Julia Roberts and Brad Pitt, The Daily Mail writes.)
And, while it wasn’t totally specified whose birthday was being celebrated, the “belated” in the caption leads us to believe that Meghan was at least one of the guests of honor at the lunch. For the occasion, she wore Ariel Gordon’s Imperial Disc Pendant Necklace, which the brand confirmed on its Instagram: “And just like that…Meghan wore her AGJ Imperial Disc Necklace out to lunch with her girlfriends.” The piece is described as “evoking a castaway ‘70s vibe, it’s chic as can be with its long, twisted rope chain, sans serif engraving, sandblast finish, and high polish textured border. You can engrave around the perimeter of the disc, on the top/bottom, or leave it blank. Available with tiny diamond detail for a little extra sparkle.”
Lee is the co-founder of Highbrow Hippie—a wellness lifestyle and beauty brand—alongside Myka Harris. Per Hello, it began as a blog and opened its storefront in 2019, where high-end beauty treatments and services are offered, as well as yoga and meditation sessions.
Wade has a background in fashion and is perhaps most notably known as a poet; her work often centers around female empowerment. She is the author of four books with another due out in October.
Cleo Wade
Meghan’s lunch outing comes as Harry returns from a two-stop trip across Asia, visiting Japan and Singapore in support of his charity, Sentebale. In Singapore, friend Nacho Figueras said that he and Harry were thinking of their wives, telling Hello “We miss our wives very much. This was a very short trip. Although it’s a few days, it’s a lot of travelling for 24 hours in Japan and a few hours here [Singapore], but we miss them. We wish they were here.”
We have seen Meghan out more than normal this summer—in addition to this lunch outing, she’s been seen at the farmer’s market (where she picked up some fresh flowers and sampled honey, per The Daily Mail), a Taylor Swift concert, and dinner dates alongside Harry. To mark her birthday earlier this month, the couple dined out at Tre Lune; Page Six reported that Meghan also took in a screening of Barbie to celebrate, alongside friends like Portia de Rossi, before spending the evening at the exclusive San Ysidro Ranch in the hills of Montecito, the same location she shot these photos for a Variety interview last year.
And remember when we reported recently about Meghan’s potential return to Instagram under the @meghan handle? There might really be some validity there—the aforementioned @highbrowhippie Instagram account also follows the @meghan account, “fueling rumors Meghan’s Instagram return is definitely on,” The Mirror reports. If true, we can’t wait, and it seems many others can’t, as well—despite having no posts and following no one (and featuring a vague photo of flowers), the account has nearly 70,000 followers.
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Rachel Burchfield is a writer, editor, and podcaster whose primary interests are fashion and beauty, society and culture, and, most especially, the British Royal Family and other royal families around the world. She serves as Marie Claire’s Senior Celebrity and Royals Editor and has also contributed to publications like Allure, Cosmopolitan, Elle, Glamour, Harper’s Bazaar, InStyle, People, Vanity Fair, Vogue, and W, among others. Before taking on her current role with Marie Claire, Rachel served as its Weekend Editor and later Royals Editor. She is the cohost of Podcast Royal, a show that was named a top five royal podcast by The New York Times. A voracious reader and lover of books, Rachel also hosts I’d Rather Be Reading, which spotlights the best current nonfiction books hitting the market and interviews the authors of them. Rachel frequently appears as a media commentator, and she or her work has appeared on outlets like NBC’s Today Show, ABC’s Good Morning America, CNN, and more.
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