The symbolism that Meghan Markle chose for her stunning New Year’s Day return to Instagram after five years could not be any more obvious.

In classic, black-and-white imagery, a video, reportedly shot by Prince Harry, shows the Duchess of Sussex, barefoot and wearing a casual, flowing white shirt and white Capri pants. She runs toward the surf of the Pacific Ocean near her Montecito home on a wintry-looking day. Laughing playfully, she uses her famed calligraphic skills to write a cursive “2025” in the sand.

Meghan’s new Instagram profile photo also shows her in another, sunnier beach shot, donned in a slip-style cotton dress that’s also very white. She also wears a large smile, as well as her only adornment, an elegantly simple designer necklace — which the Daily Mail said sells for $15,000. A day after being launched, the simply handled @meghan Instagram account had amassed 830,000 followers.

Public relations experts told the Daily Mail that the beach imagery, and the all-white outfit, were obviously chosen to show “purity” and a desire for a “metaphorical clean slate” in 2025 — following a challenging few years for her public image.

“The all-white attire screams ‘purity of reinvention’ while the ‘2025’ etched in the sand conveniently doubles as both a literal timestamp and a metaphorical clean slate,” said Mark Borkowski, a top U.K. P.R. expert told the Daily Mail.

“Meghan has gone for the classic cryptic performance art Instagram post,” Borkowski continued. “It’s a P.R. textbook example of someone signaling a new era, designed to intrigue and mystify.”

“It’s a subtle power play, simultaneously fostering curiosity and establishing control,” he added.

In the coming year, it’s expected that Meghan will relaunch her personal brand with her Netflix cooking show and her American Riviera Orchard lifestyle company.

In true influencer style, Meghan could also use her Instagram account to generate income, with companies paying up to $1 million to be advertised in one of her posts, the Daily Mail reported. There’s “no reason Meghan couldn’t be earning those sorts of fees,” P.R. expert Eric Schiffer told the Daily Mail.

The past year has not been kind to Meghan’s brand. Since being labeled a “grifter” when she and Harry were dropped by Spotify for only producing her 12-episode Archetypes podcast, Meghan has faced harsh, entertainment industry reports about staff turnover and trademark problems with American Riviera Orchard, as well as renewed accusations in The Hollywood Reporter and the Daily Beast that she’s “Duchess Difficult,” the “demon boss” and “terrible” to work for. Famed editor Tina Brown proclaimed in the fall that Meghan has “the worst judgment in the world,” while media critics lacerated the “tone-deaf” Netflix series, “Polo,” that she co-produced with Harry.

The New York Post opined that Meghan’s return to Instagram could be her way of seizing back control of the narrative around her public image. Deadline also said her new account allows her to hit back at all the online trolls that made her and Harry decide to leave social media in 2020. Notably, Meghan isn’t allowing people to comment on her new beach post.

As a Hollywood TV actor Meghan, was an avid social media user as she ran her The Tig blog, described as “a hub for the discerning palate — those with a hunger for food, travel, fashion and beauty.” She shuttered The Tig in 2018, shortly before she married Harry and joined the British royal family.

To promote their work as a senior royal couple, Meghan and Harry launched their wildly popular Sussex Royal Instagram account in April 2019. Their account reached a record number of 1 million followers within six hours of being launched.

But the couple discontinued the Sussex Royal account, around the time they left royal duties in 2020 and moved to the United States.

Meghan expressed reluctance to return to social media due to the “almost unsurvivable” online abuse she said she faced, Deadline reported. She and Harry also have urged social media platforms to strengthen content-moderation policies, saying that some apps could damage the mental health of young people.

Two years ago, Meghan teased the possibility of returning to social media in an interview with New York Magazine’s The Cut, confiding to the reporter, “Do you want to know a secret? I’m getting back … on Instagram.”

Nearly two years passed before Meghan launched an Instagram account for American Riviera Orchard in March, teasing her brand’s luxury Central California coast aesthetic in “family, cooking, entertaining and home decor,” as Elle reported. Shortly after, she got some of her famous friends to post images on their social media accounts, showing that they had received limited edition pots of American Riviera Orchard strawberry jam.

Since then, nothing much official has come forth about American Riviera Orchard. The Instagram account only shows images of its logo, while the brand has been mired in a trademark struggles with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

Most recently, the Oregon-based company that sells premium, gold-foil-wrapped Harry and David pears filed a claim with the patent office, saying that the name, American Riviera Orchard, was too similar to “Royal Riviera,” the trademark that was given the company’s founders for the fruit they raise in the Rogue River Valley.