Palm beach interior design and the French art de vivre

Rita Chraibi: Palm Beach Interior Design and the French Art de Vivre

September 5, 2026

French interior designer Rita Chraibi has built her work around a clear conviction: a residence should never feel like it was designed in fragments. Educated at the École Camondo in Paris, she approaches each project as a complete composition, where proportion, circulation, light, materials, bespoke detailing, furniture and art belong to the same narrative.

Chraibi founded International Designers in 2013 as the international studio through which she develops this vision. Her work spans private residences and major renovations in Paris, New York, Greenwich, Miami, and Palm Beach, bringing a distinctly French sense of proportion and refinement to homes that remain deeply connected to their locations and the people who inhabit them.

Maison Royale, Chraibi’s private Paris atelier, extends her creative vision into bespoke interiors, allowing furniture, joinery and distinctive details to be conceived specifically for each residence and executed in collaboration with exceptional European makers.

Her portfolio includes the Louis Vuitton Residence and Residence 42 at Steinway Tower in New York, Monad Terrace in Miami, Central Park Tower and a private estate in Greenwich. Together with international awards and editorial recognition, these projects reveal a designer less interested in following a recognizable formula than in creating interiors with individuality, permanence and a sense of place.

Q: How did your early life and education shape your design language?

Rita Chraibi: My understanding of design began very early through my family. My grandmother was one of Morocco’s pioneering women in real estate development during the 1950s. Through her, I understood that the places we create are never simply physical spaces; they influence the way people live, gather and remember.

At the École Camondo, I learned rigor before style. I developed a profound respect for proportion, the decorative arts, materials and the relationship between furniture and space. That discipline has never left me.

I never begin a project by deciding what it should “look like.” I begin with volume, circulation, light and the character of the building. Then comes the question of how the client lives. The aesthetic emerges from those elements rather than being imposed upon them.

For me, an interior should feel inevitable when it is finished, as though every element has always belonged there.

Q: What do your landmark projects reveal about the way you approach each residence?

Rita Chraibi: I do not believe in repeating a formula. Every residence has to develop its own identity.

In 2022, Louis Vuitton selected me to design the first private residence created in collaboration with the Maison, at Steinway Tower in New York. It was an extraordinary dialogue between interior design, fashion, art and collectible design, but it was ultimately still about creating a home.

At Monad Terrace, in Jean Nouvel’s waterfront setting, the conversation was completely different. It was about light, water, transparency and contemporary materiality. Residence 42, Central Park Tower and the Greenwich estate each required another language again.

That is very important to me. I never want a client to feel that I have reproduced a previous project for them. The location, the building, the art, the way they entertain and the way they live privately should all influence the character of the residence.

The continuity in my work is not a particular look. It is the level of attention given to proportion, refinement and detail.

Q: How does Palm Beach influence your approach to interior design and the French art de vivre?

Rita Chraibi: Palm Beach has a very particular elegance because its architecture, landscape and social life are inseparable from light. There is a fluidity between the house, the garden, the terraces and the way people entertain that has to be respected.

I am interested in bringing refinement and permanence to that lifestyle without making an interior feel overly decorated or disconnected from Florida.

For me, the French art de vivre is not a decorating style. It is a way of thinking about daily life. It is the intelligence of proportion, comfort, beauty, culture and detail — and the idea that these things should be experienced naturally rather than displayed.

In Palm Beach, I would never try to recreate Paris or reproduce a French château literally. What interests me is the dialogue: bringing a French sensibility for proportion, elegance and detail into Palm Beach’s extraordinary light, vegetation and way of living.

The result should feel sophisticated but effortless, and above all timeless.

Q: What principles guide the development of a complete residence?

Rita Chraibi: Everything begins with listening.

I need to understand how my clients actually live: how they enter the house, where they gather, how they entertain, what they collect, where they read, where they want privacy and even how they want to feel at different moments of the day.

From there, I establish one complete vision encompassing spatial planning, materials, lighting, interior detailing, bespoke joinery, furniture, textiles and decorative arts.

What I resist most is fragmentation. A residence can contain many beautiful things and still feel unresolved if those things were conceived independently.

My role is to maintain one clear creative direction from the earliest drawings through installation, while working closely with licensed architects, engineers, contractors and specialist makers wherever their expertise is required.

When the proportions of a room, the profile of a door, the stone, the lighting, the curtains and the furniture all belong to the same idea, you feel it — even if you cannot immediately explain why.

That coherence is what creates elegance.

Q: How does Maison Royale contribute to that creative continuity?

Rita Chraibi: Maison Royale is where the work becomes almost couture.

It allows us to develop pieces specifically for the proportions and character of a residence rather than adapting the residence to what already exists.

A library, a dressing room, a kitchen, a door, a wall panel or a piece of furniture can be drawn for a particular room, produced through our European network and developed down to the material, profile, patina and finish.

For me, bespoke execution is not ornament added at the end of a project. It can actually structure an interior. A beautifully proportioned library can define an entire room. A door can change the rhythm of a corridor. The scale of a piece of furniture can completely alter the balance of a salon.

Maison Royale gives me the freedom to carry the original design intention through to those details and, equally important, to create residences that cannot simply be reproduced elsewhere.

I believe true luxury is increasingly found in that individuality.

Q: How do you view international recognition, and what should a client consider when choosing an interior designer?

Rita Chraibi: Awards are meaningful to me when they recognize completed work and the discipline of the entire team behind it.

Recognition from the MUSE Design Awards, SBID International Design Awards, A’ Design Award & Competition, Design et al’s International Design & Architecture Awards and Luxe RED Awards has been an honour. Distinctions including Best Interior Designer of the Year and Best Luxury Residence in the World are particularly meaningful because they acknowledge the result, not simply the idea behind it.

Editorial coverage from Forbes, AD PRO, ELLE Decor, WWD, Robb Report, Harper’s Bazaar and The Wall Street Journal has also allowed the work to reach an international audience.

But for a client choosing an interior designer, I think the questions should go beyond beautiful imagery.

Who is actually establishing the creative direction? How involved will that person remain throughout the project? Does the designer understand the character of the residence rather than simply applying a style to it? And is there a coherent vision strong enough to survive the hundreds of decisions that will inevitably be made along the way?

A significant residence requires an enormous degree of trust.

For me, the most successful projects come from that trust, from genuine dialogue and from one clear vision carried through every detail.

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