Meghan Markle launching clothing line for UK women's charity

LONDON: The Duchess of Sussex is launching a clothing line to support a charity that helps unemployed women find work.

Meghan said the workwear collection would provide the charity, Smart Works, with continuity. The racks of clothing and array of shoes and bags Smart Work has now come in mismatched sizes and colors, she said.

She has teamed up with designer and friend Misha Nonoo and British retailers Marks & Spencer, John Lewis & Partners and Jigsaw to create the collection.

“Many of the brands agreed to use the one-for-one model: for each item purchased by a customer, one is donated to the charity,” Meghan wrote in the September issue of British Vogue, which she guest edited. “Not only does this allow us to be part of each other’s story, it reminds us we are in it together.”

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Smart Works provides training and interview clothes for unemployed women. The charity says it has helped more than 11,000 people. Meghan has visited the organization privately since being made its patron in January.

She said Smart Works is seen wrongly as a “makeover” program that transforms a woman into a new person with donated clothes. Meghan described it in the magazine, which comes out this week, as a network of women seeing to empower other women.

“This is not a fairytale,” she wrote. “If it’s a cultural reference you’re after, forget Cinderella —this is a story of Wonder Woman, ready to take on the world in her metaphorical and literal cape.”

Designer Nonoo is the person credited with organizing the blind date that introduced Meghan and her future husband, Prince Harry.