India Hicks Biography

India Amanda Caroline Hicks (born 5 September 1967 in London, England) is a former fashion model. She currently runs her eponymous lifestyle brand, which she founded in 2015.

Early life

Hicks is the third child of Lady Pamela Mountbatten and David Nightingale Hicks, an interior designer of the 1960s and 1970s. Through her maternal grandfather, The Earl Mountbatten of Burma, she is a second cousin to The Prince of Wales, who is also her godfather.

Brought up in London and Oxfordshire, she attended Gordonstoun school in Scotland, until she was expelled for entertaining boys in her room. She spent holidays at the family estate in Ireland and at her father's self-designed and built Bahamian-holiday home. In 1981, she served as bridesmaid to Lady Diana Spencer at her wedding to Prince Charles.

Career

India has published three books: Island Life, Island Beauty, and, most recently, Island Style (which made The New York Times Best Seller List).

Aged 17, she drove from England to Italy to meet designer Emilio Pucci. On arrival, he made her model all of his catsuits. In 1990, Hicks graduated from the New England School of Photography in Boston, MA with a concentration in Color and Editorial photography and graduated with Honors. She later moved to New York City, and developed a career as a model in the 1980s and 1990s, working for Ralph Lauren and J. Crew amongst others, and featuring in Tatler magazine; she was also the face of British brand Viyella.

Hicks renovated and developed several plantation style guest houses and a hotel in the Caribbean with her partner David Flint Wood. She also owns the boutique 'The Sugar Mill' where she sells clothes, bed linens and items gathered while travelling.

In 2007, Hicks hosted the second season of the Bravo interior design competition TV series Top Design.

In 2011, she commentated on the wedding of Prince William and Catherine Middleton, for both ITV and ABC. She has been filmed as a royal commentator for the BBC, ABC, Channel 4, NBC, Oprah Winfrey and Larry King.

In 2015, she (along with business partners, Konstantin Glasmacher and Nicholas Keuper) founded India Hicks, Inc., a lifestyle brand that is sold through entrepreneurial women at home, online, or one-to-one.

Personal life

David Flint Wood, a former ad man turned decorator, is the father of Hicks' four children. They are also the legal guardians of a Bahamian teenager, Wesley.

• Felix Austen Flint Wood (born 23 May 1997 Miami, Florida)
• Amory John Flint Wood (born 25 June 1999 Miami, Florida)
• Conrad Lorenzo Flint Wood (born 25 April 2003 Miami, Florida)
• Domino Carmen Flint Wood (born 17 December 2007 Miami, Florida). Goddaughter of Crown Princess Marie-Chantal of Greece.

The family lives in the Bahamas, but they also maintain a house in Oxfordshire, England, not far from where Hicks was raised.

Ancestry