Lifestyle Is the New Luxury
When With Love, Meghan debuted on Netflix, it wasn’t just another celebrity lifestyle series—it was a quietly strategic blueprint for modern luxury branding. Marketed as a personal wellness and culinary docu-series, Meghan Markle’s foray into slow-living content delivered more than organic recipes and curated rituals. It offered a new visual and emotional language for what aspirational living feels like in 2025: intentional, restorative, and exquisitely private. At Brendan Brown Real Estate, we view these cultural moments as market indicators. In today’s ultra-high-net-worth world, lifestyle isn’t just adjacent to real estate—it is real estate. The homes people choose are extensions of their identities, and in the case of With Love, Meghan, that identity is soft-edged, grounded in nature, and coded with quiet status.
The impact? When Meghan is seen baking gluten-free muffins in a sun-drenched Montecito kitchen surrounded by antique stone and rosemary sprigs, she isn’t just showcasing personal taste—she’s reprogramming what luxury looks like. It’s no longer about flash or footprint. It’s about alignment. I have had clients reference scenes from the show in their inquiries, asking for properties that evoke “that light,” “that calm,” or “that kitchen feeling.” For prospective buyers in Beverly Hills, Montecito, and Brentwood, architecture is now filtered through emotional resonance. The question isn’t, how big? It’s how does it make me feel?
From Streaming to Showing
What makes With Love, Meghan so effective isn’t just the tone—it’s the aesthetic intention. The series leans heavily on natural light, muted palettes, heirloom ceramics, and edible gardens. These visual cues may seem effortless, but they’re precise. They tap directly into the evolving psychology of luxury clientele. I have seen a growing preference for homes that feel curated but lived-in—minimalist yet warm, sustainable yet substantive.
Clients have asked for Montecito estates with arched windows, chef’s kitchens with butcher-block islands, detached guest cottages, and acreage with citrus groves—not because of traditional metrics like ROI or school districts, but because those features conjure a particular kind of stillness and control. One client flew in from London to tour a George Washington Smith estate, simply because “it looked like it belonged on her show.” Another, a New York-based media executive, described her Brentwood dream home as “With Love, Meghan energy, but Neff bones.” That’s the new buyer language—and wisely I have become fluent in it.
Real Demand Meets Emotional ROI
The effect of cultural branding on real estate isn’t abstract—it’s quantifiable. Since the launch of With Love, Meghan, there has been a measurable uptick in demand for properties in Montecito and Beverly Hills that emphasize texture, light, and narrative over excess. Homes that once felt too traditional—Spanish Revival, Mediterranean, even 1920s ranches—are now trading at a premium if they deliver a sense of timeless intimacy. And buyers are increasingly prioritizing emotional ROI: how the home reflects who they are—or who they’re trying to become.
I have noticed clients having a more nuanced understanding of value. A property’s price per square foot will always matter—it’s the baseline. But increasingly, what defines a trophy home is not just math; it’s meaning. How their garden appears—and what they can grow within it. The porch and the patio, the softness of the morning light, the curve of a lemon tree—these are no longer romantic afterthoughts. They’re expectations. This is the new standard that Meghan Markle is cultivating, both on-screen and off. Her aesthetic doesn’t just suggest how a space should look—it redefines what it should do. It should nourish. It should soothe. It should signal a life in balance. At Brendan Brown Real Estate, we recognize that buyers are no longer purchasing properties; they’re investing in possibility. And that possibility is being shaped by cultural touchstones like With Love, Meghan, where simplicity is aspirational and every exterior detail is an emotional indicator of worth.
Reading Between the Rooms
With Love, Meghan has made one thing clear: the new luxury buyer doesn’t just want to be impressed—they want to be understood. They’re seeking spaces that support rituals, support privacy, and support reinvention. In today’s top-tier real estate market, an advisor must go beyond square footage and specs. We must be interpreters of aesthetic psychology. Whether sourcing off-market estates in Brentwood Park, Montecito hideaways, or design-forward Beverly Hills compounds, I specialize in delivering more than homes— I deliver alignment.
As lifestyle continues to shape how the elite live, build, and buy, we expect content like With Love, Meghan to play an increasingly active role in real estate trends. For us, it’s not just about what a house has—it’s about what it says. And as the market continues to shift, we remain at the forefront—translating story into structure, identity into investment.
