Instagram/Lil Olives
The little girl with long auburn hair smiled as she was snapped in the sunshine wearing a floppy straw hat and pretty patterned sundress.
A shy smile played at her lips as she held hands with another youngster, a delicate bracelet wrapped around her left wrist.
The image was one of many shared to promote a new children’s clothing collection by San Francisco brand Lil Olives – a label launched in 2024 by mum-of-two Dhanya Gutta and born from the belief that “childhood deserves to be celebrated beautifully”.
Except the brand in question has now found itself unwittingly at the centre of a firestorm, amid extraordinary claims that the little girl featured in pictures promoting its new ‘Petite Fleurs’ collection “inspired by European Summers” bears an uncanny likeness to none other than Princess Lilibet, the daughter of Prince Harry and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex.
Royal commentator Paula Froelich – the woman behind the Paula Froelich: Uncensored Substack – was the first to note the resemblance while also pointing to some similarities between the Lil Olives website, and the website of Meghan’s own lifestyle brand As Ever.
“Sometimes you see two seemingly separate brands – one a bland, beige “cozy” lifestyle brand with “keepsake” boxes, another a bland, beige “heirloom” children’s clothing brand – and you can’t help but wonder… what the hell is going on here?” she wrote in a recent post.
Froelich ran description wording from both websites through AI agent Claude, which – she claimed – came back to say each followed “a rigid narrative formula, simply swapping the nouns to fit the specific prompt”.
But, while the use of AI in website copy generation is nothing new, it was the photo of the little girl in the floppy straw hat that caused quite the stir online.
Just days earlier, Meghan had shared new photos of Lilibet to celebrate her fifth birthday. The snaps showed the young princess barefoot in the garden wearing a cream-coloured sundress, and in the arms of her father – a delicate bracelet dangling on her wrist in both images.
As is traditional for Meghan – who values her daughter’s privacy – Lilibet’s face was obscured in the photos.
And that’s perhaps why eagle-eyed onlookers have seized upon the unrelated photo of another little girl wearing a sundress and bracelet to fill the gaps.
Froelich pointed to the images of the child model on the Lil Olives website, wearing the brand’s Buttercream Bloom Dress, describing her as “very similar-looking” to Princess Lilibet.
“Is this Lili in the Lil’ Olives ad? Who knows,” the expert wrote on her substack. “Are any of the images AI-generated?”, she also questioned.
Royal watchers were quick to react to the revelation.
“This blew my mind! Could it be true?’ royal commentator Shauna Kay asked on substack, calling the photos “eerie”.
Royal expert and broadcaster Dan Wootton, speaking on Dan Wootton Outspoken YouTube channel, called the situation a “mystery”.
“This could be a total coincidence, of course it could be,” Wootton explained to his followers.
“But my point is that it is Meghan who is encouraging this speculation about the identity of her own daughter.”
The former Sun journalist pointed to Meghan and Harry’s ongoing commitment to concealing Lilibet’s identity as exacerbating the issue.
“Actually, if she were just to post normal pictures… then everyone would be able to speak and talk about Lili normally, rather than this sort of internet hunt to find the real Lili,” he said.
Meanwhile, Meghan has continued to share photos of Lilibet to her own Instagram page, while continuing to hide her face.
On June 10 Meghan shared an image of her daughter in a t-shirt bearing an illustration of singing superstar Beyonce.
“B is for Beyonce,” the t-shirt slogan read.
The new images have reportedly been posted with the blessing of Prince Harry, who has apparently gone through something of a change of heart when it comes to his stance on social media.
Royal commentator Rob Shuter, of the Naughty But Nice substack, recently quoted sources as saying Harry not only approved the photos released for Lilibet’s fifth birthday, but he supported the act.
“Harry is completely on board now,” an insider told Shuter. “There was a time when he wanted the children almost entirely out of public view. That’s changed.”
“Harry understands that Meghan’s brand and public platform occasionally include sharing family moments,” the source went on. “He no longer sees that as a threat to their privacy.”
“Harry’s issue was never family photos,” the insider added. “His issue was photographers stalking his children. These images are shared on their terms, when they want, how they want, and that’s a huge distinction for him.”
