REBECCA DE RAVENEL is not one for footwear fantasies. “I’m constantly barefoot,” says the 29-year-old Bahamian, the daughter of the Marquis and Marquise de Ravenel (her mother is an English banking heiress). “I hate wearing shoes.” While this would be heresy for most stylish girls, it’s in keeping with de Ravenel’s effortless, ultrafeminine look: long, flowing printed dresses by the British label Soler, silk slips by Sabbia Rosa, caftans picked up on trips to India—and lace tops and bottoms as daywear (like this skirt, left, from The Row). In cooler climes, she adds a tailored men’s-style jacket by Chloé or Balenciaga and black flat Giuseppe Zanotti boots.
Her cosmopolitan wardrobe comes by way of a globe-trotting life: Raised in Nassau’s exclusive Lyford Cay community until she was seven, de Ravenel moved to Paris for school and then relocated 10 years ago to New York, where she studied fashion design at Parsons. She has since worked at Carolina Herrera, Vera Wang, Oscar de la Renta, Tory Burch, and Ungaro. Now back in Lyford Cay in her own little bungalow, de Ravenel has been forsaking the reggae clubs of her early 20s for weekend trips with her landscape-architect boyfriend to Miami, New York, and beyond. During the week, she clocks long days with Amanda Lindroth designing interiors for homes (and The Dunmore, a newly refurbished private beach club on Harbour Island).
All in all, it’s been a seamless transition from her fashion days. “If I go to flea markets, I’m usually drawn to the furniture rather than the clothes,” says de Ravenel, whose parents owned an antiques store in Paris when she was younger. “It’s a new passion, and I hope it sticks.”
