Duchess Meghan donated the flower arrangements from her baby shower to charity

February 22, 2019

I find it very interesting that Harper’s Bazaar has gotten a few really good exclusives this week about the Duchess of Sussex’s baby-shower trip to New York. Someone seems to be leaking to Bazaar from within Meg’s camp, and I would suspect it’s with Meghan’s approval. My guess is Jessica Mulroney. But I don’t know for sure. Anyway, the “baby shower festivities” happened on Tuesday and Wednesday at The Mark hotel, in a suite paid for by Serena Williams. We also knew that Serena co-hosted the baby shower, but what we didn’t know was that Meghan’s sorority sister Genevieve Hillis was the other co-host. Bazaar had more in their exclusive:

Baby Sussex is officially showered. BAZAAR.com can confirm the Duchess of Sussex’s longtime friends Serena Williams and Genevieve Hillis co-hosted a “private, intimate” baby shower for Meghan on Wednesday, February 20 in New York City. A source who attended the event tells BAZAAR the party took place in Williams’ room, the Grand Penthouse at the Mark Hotel, with approximately 20 of Duchess Meghan’s closest friends “from her teenage years to the present,” including Amal Clooney, Gayle King, and Suits co-star Abigail Spencer.
The low-key celebration, described as chill and relaxed by the attendee, was coordinated by Jennifer Zabinski of JZ Events, who planned Williams’ 2017 wedding to Alexis Ohanian.
Meghan’s party included an “amazing” flower-arranging lesson led by Lewis Miller, with the resulting creations donated to Repeat Roses. The organization supplies previously-used floral arrangements to facilities like hospitals, hospices, nursing homes, cancer treatment centers, and domestic abuse and homeless shelters, and ensures the arrangements are composted once they can no longer be enjoyed.
Michelin-star chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten supplied the food for the party; his restaurant, The Mark, is located at the hotel.
It comes as no surprise that Williams hosted the special event for Duchess Meghan, who’s expecting her first child with Prince Harry this spring. The tennis star and newly-minted royal have been friends since 2010, when they met at the Super Bowl. Hillis is a longtime friend and former sorority sister of Meghan. (The former actress and Northwestern University grad was in Kappa Kappa Gamma.) Both Williams and Hillis attended the duchess’ wedding to Prince Harry last year, as did fellow shower guests like Clooney and Spencer.

[From Harper’s Bazaar]

The part about the flower arrangements is a brilliant stroke of PR on so many levels. First of all, it’s a reminder that this was a classy baby shower, not one of those showers where you have to pin a diaper on something or go bobbing for pacifiers. No, they took a professional flower-arranging class, which is just SO Meghan. It’s also so Meghan to then donate those flower arrangements to charity. As for the detail that Meg’s sorority sister cohosted… wow, utter silence from all of the Meg-haters about how Meg doesn’t have any long-term friends, huh?

I’ve been wondering about the baby gifts, but as it turns out, Meghan didn’t even know what kind of haul she got: Gayle King said on CBS This Morning that Meghan declined to open gifts because “she wants to do that when [Prince] Harry and her are back together, so I really don’t know what everybody got her. I think I got her something very nice.”

And finally, I missed this Katie Nicholl piece in Vanity Fair earlier this week – apparently, Samantha Cohen is staying on as the Sussexes’ private secretary for a few more months while so much is in transition. Cohen likes Meghan and Harry and she agreed to hold off on her retirement for a few more months. Nicholl also confirms that the “break up” of the Cambridge and Sussex office staff has started, and that Meghan and Harry have already decided who will oversee the control of information around the birth of the Polo Baby: Christian Jones, the same guy Meghan went to lunch with last month.