- January 7, 2026
-
-
Loading
Loading
Regan Billingsley, founder Regan Billingsley Interiors. The firm, which she founded in 2013, is based in Naples with an office in Washington, D.C. Billingsley worked with some of the world’s leading designers, in Los Angeles and New York, prior to launching her own company. In 2025 she founded RB Curated, what’s billed as “a boutique lifestyle brand and ethical luxury label.” RB Curated, according to its website, “builds long-term relationships with artisans across Latin America, ensuring artisans are fairly compensated, deeply respected and globally celebrated.”
Open water swimming. Her core swim is one to two miles in the gulf, off Vanderbilt Beach in Naples, usually at 6 a.m. On weeks when she is home, Billingsley, 49, will swim at Vanderbilt Beach six, sometimes seven mornings a week, usually with a handful of other early-morning swimmers. “They’re such an amazing and supportive community,” she says. “Everyone is so encouraging. It doesn’t matter how fast you are or how long you swim.”
Water world: Billingsley is also something of an open-swim adventurer, hitting the waves anywhere from Mexico to the Chesapeake Bay off the Maryland coast and the Florida Keys to Croatia. “When I start my day with a swim,” she says, “I feel like I can tackle anything that comes my way.”
Gene pool: Billingsley comes from an athletic family: her dad played college football and her mom played tennis. Her sister was a long-distance runner. Billingsley says when she was four years old her dad “just put me in the deep end of the pool and said ‘figure it out.’” She did, and she loved it. Billingsley got so good at figuring it out she made the U.S Junior National Swim Team. Billingsley later swam for the University of Maryland, where the 200-yard freestyle was her specialty. (Billingsley’s high school in Bethesda, Maryland produced another swimming champion, some 20 years after Billingsley went there: Katie Ledecky, the most-decorated female swimmer ever and a 14-time Olympic medal winner.)
Drought days: The every-waking-momment nature of competitive swimming eventually got to Billingsley. For a decade or so after college, she focused on her career, where she earned masters degrees, in interior architecture from the renowned Pratt Institute, and art education from Columbia University. She stopped swimming. The burnout even bled into her dreams: “I had a recurring nightmare,” she says, “where I was on the starting block, but I forgot my swim cap.” And Billingsley could hear her coach in the dream, where he whispered “‘go faster.’”
Back at it: Around 2015, a friend suggested Billingsley get back to swimming, with the Great Chesapeake Bay Swim, a 4.4-mile event in Maryland. That rekindled her love of swimming, which she calls “rhythmic and meditative.” It’s a big help, too, she says, that she’s no longer swimming against the high-pressure of a stopwatch or distance tracker. “I swim for myself now,” she says. “I get up at 5 a.m. but on my own terms. … I love starting the day with a swim. That’s when everything in the water comes alive. It’s when I really feel like I come alive.”
Sing along: While there are earphones on the market that work underwater, Billingsley prefers to swim sans music. At least there’s no music pumping into her ears. She says when she’s in the zone she will play songs in her head, like tunes from Paul Simon’s Graceland album. “If I really need to get pumped up,” she says, “I will hum some AC/DC.”
Down south: Billingsley’s favorite place to swim is the Lagoon of Seven Colors in Bacalar, Mexico, a fresh water lagoon on the country’s southeast coast. She’s been there six times, she says, drawn by vibrant blues and greens. Billingsley has booked swimming-themed trips to Bacalar, in addition to jaunts to each Greece and Croatia, through Strel, a tour company that specializes in open open-water swim vacations.
Tumble turn: Billingsley has had some interesting experiences in conjunction with the swims. One example: At Oceanman Miami, a 10K open water swim, she refueled with what’s now a swim competition staple: a cheeseburger, milkshake and fries from Five Guys — delivered to her hotel room. At another competition. a 10K from Cancun to Isla Mujeres in Mexico dubbed El Cruce, Billingsley witnessed another ritual. “It’s a really fun swim because they send you off with a Mayan ceremony,” she says, “and the water is so clear you see fish, turtles and manta rays. She finished second at El Cruce — it translates to the crossing in English — for overall females.
Bucket list: A trip Billingsley hasn’t done yet but is angling for is a live-aboard swim vacation in Greece or Turkey. “Essentially you live on a boat for a week and spend the days swimming,” she says. A big trip she’s long wanted to do meanwhile, is coming up soon: a swim camp in Belize, scheduled for this this February with a group of some 30 swimmers, she says, who will “swim to our hearts’ content.”
Elbows high: Billingsley gets her exercise from other sources in addition to swimming. She does some weightlifting, she says, and loves to go hiking and skiing, especially when she visits her sister in Colorado. She will also go running — sometimes — for cardio, but readily admits that’s not her thing. “I’m a fish out of water,” she says, “when it comes to running.”
