'RHONY' star Rebecca Minkoff dishes on her Scientology ties
Designer Rebecca Minkoff helped define the downtown New York "it" girl aesthetic of the early aughts. Now she's making reality TV her runway.
The 42-year-old fashion designer has a recurring role on the new season of "The Real Housewives of New York City," which premiered Oct. 1 on Bravo.
She appears as a close friend of the cast, which includes fashion designer and businesswoman Jenna Lyons, 56; brash real estate agent/developer Erin Lichy, 37; moody model-turned-hot sauce entrepreneur Ubah Hassan, 41; no-nonsense influencer Sai De Silva, 43; comms girl-about-town Brynn Whitfield, 37; unfiltered fashion publicist Jessel Taank, 44; and art curator Racquel Chevremont, 53.
It's the 15th season for the show and the second since a dramatic, controversial reboot saw beloved, longtime cast members, including Ramona Singer, Sonja Morgan and Dorinda Medley, kicked to Andy Cohen's curb.
"It's fun, funny with a little bit of a drama – I said, 'Okay, I can sign up for that,'" Minkoff told The Post of joining the show after a mutual friend connected her with Lichy, who talked up the gig.
Minkoff launched her eponymous line of boho clothes and oversized hobo bags in 2005 with her brother Uri Minkoff as CEO. It quickly took off, and stars such as Lindsay Lohan and Jessica Alba were regularly photographed with her iconic Morning After Bag — a $525 tote that carried many stylish 20- and 30-something women into adulthood.
In recent years, Minkoff has had a resurgence, with Gen Z A-listers such as Jenna Ortega and Kaia Gerber wearing items such as her black lace cami and strappy, heeled black Nadine sandals.
For her label-conscious "RHONY" castmates, Minkoff needed no introduction.
"I know your name like I know Coca-Cola, I'm so happy to meet you," Hassan gushes to Minkoff on the season premiere.
But in pure "RHONY fashion," there's no shortage of petty drama from the get-go.
Self-proclaimed "Bergdorf brat" Whitfield , who stirs the pot this season, digs at the designer for having her goods in a discount store in a soundbite from the trailer.
"If you're at Nordstrom Rack, you probably saw her stuff," Whitfield jeers, before it cuts to Minkoff scoffing, "Whatever, I built a $100 million dollar company."
Whitfield also teased that Minkoff's religion — she was raised both in the Jewish faith and as a Scientologist — will be a hot topic on the new season.
Her doctor father, David Minkoff, and designer mother, Sue Minkoff, are high-ranking members in the Church of Scientology, and they moved the family to Clearwater, Fla., in 1989 to be near the church's headquarters.
Minkoff and her two brothers attended the True School, a Scientology elementary school, Air Mail reported.
The designer has seldom discussed her Scientology background, but her ties to it — and the fact that her father has been a big donor to the church — resurfaced with news of her joining "RHONY."
She hasn't relished the attention.
"We're at a time and place where we can be divided and lead with hate and bigotry or we can just be tolerant of people's beliefs," she told The Post. "[Scientology] has helped me personally. It's helped me professionally. It's helped me weather a lot of stress. That's what I use it for. It's a method I apply to help me with stress."
On a 2021 episode of the "Dinner Party With Jeremy Fall" podcast, she explained , "We're just separating the body from the spirit. It has personally helped me from my own demons, my own things I'm not happy about myself."
Minkoff left Clearwater in 1999 at age 18 and moved to New York, interning for small clothing company Craig Taylor while working on her own designs.
Two years later, she got major exposure when actress Jenna Elfman — a fellow Scientologist — wore Minkoff's ripped, off-the-shoulder "I Love NY" T-shirt design on "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno." She was quickly flooded with orders.
"People forget the power of TV back then," she said.
Minkoff stood out among the preppy designers — like Tory Burch and Kate Spade — who were popular at the time. Her price points were more accessible, with most bags under $1,000, and her signature pieces, such as a perfectly cut black leather jacket, were more East Village sidewalk than country club.
Her biggest break came in 2004, courtesy of the hit MTV reality show "Laguna Beach."
On one episode, star/aspiring designer Lauren Conrad sat front row at a Minkoff show to get inspiration. The father of Conrad's castmate Trey Phillips, now a designer for Vera Wang, was a patient of Minkoff's father and asked for the invite for his son.
Minkoff also styled Heidi Klum that year for her first season of "Project Runway" and went on to dress stars such as "Top Chef"s Padma Lakshmi.
In 2009, she married commercial director/producer Gavin Bellour, 47, and they now have four children together. The family splits its time between the Hamptons; Dumbo, Brooklyn; and the Gulf Coast of Florida.
By 2014, Minkoff's label had reached more than $100 million in sales, cementing her as the queen of bohemian feminine style and earning her a spot on Fortune's 40 Under 40 list .
But she also faced her share of criticism from former employees who have hurled allegations of negative and "horrible" work place conditions on anonymous company review site Glassdoor.
"People are going to criticize and find fault with you, it's human nature. When it's ill-intentioned it's unfortunate," she told The Post.
Ultimately, she sees herself and other #girlbosses who were widely celebrated and then promptly taken down — such as Nasty Gal's Sophia Amoruso, Man Repeller's Leandra Cohen, The Wing's Audrey Gelman and Glossier's Emily Weiss — as being wrongly maligned.
"I think all of it was unfair," she said, adding that it was often women who started the takedowns and had the effect of discouraging other women from launching their own companies or taking leadership positions.
"Did they make mistakes? Yes," she said. "Could they have apologized and taken responsibility for it [and moved on]? Yes."
Instead, she noted, many disgraced #girlbosses resigned, something men in their position wouldn't have done.
"When there's a take down of men they refuse to step down," she said. "They stand in their power whether they have it or not."
In 2018, a year after the #MeToo movement ignited a reckoning across industries, Minkoff and Elisabeth Leonard — a former employee who started as a receptionist at the company and worked her way up to the PR department — started The Female Founder Collective to help support and develop women-owned businesses.
That same year, she launched her own podcast, "Superwomen with Rebecca Minkoff ," where she shares secrets of "some of the most successful women in the world," including her new co-stars Lyons and Lichy.
Despite some of the rumors and allegations that have swirled around her over the years, Minkoff insisted she's no drama queen — and said her "RHONY" gal pals would say the same.
"I'm boring and I'm nice — according to Sai," she said.
But, she said, viewers will see some new sides of her.
"I have very funny experiences that you're never going to get from an Instagram post," Minkoff said. "I realized the depths of some of the stories that I told and I'm like, 'Wow this is going to be on TV.' "
