Lady Kitty Spencer has transformed from a shy young aristocrat into an international fashion fixture, with a modelling career, a billionaire husband and a social life spanning the worlds of high society, entertainment and luxury fashion.
The eldest daughter of the Earl Spencer, and a niece of the late Princess Diana, is now 35 and married to South African businessman Michael Lewis, 67. The couple have a three-year-old daughter, Athena, and are associated with an international lifestyle that includes fashion events and holidays in the Hamptons.
That image contrasts sharply with a photograph taken in 2011, when Lady Kitty was 20. Wearing a cream cocktail dress, navy blazer and matching netted hat, she appeared as a reserved young woman at a country gathering.
Since then, she has developed a highly polished public identity built around designer clothing, international travel and high-profile social events.
Lady Kitty Spencer’s fashion transformation
Lady Kitty signed with Storm Model Management in 2017 and went on to model for Dolce & Gabbana. She has since become an ambassador for the Italian fashion house, regularly appearing in dramatic gowns, statement jewellery and carefully styled ensembles.
Her fashion career has included walking at Milan Fashion Week and attending major events including the Fashion Awards at the Royal Albert Hall and Paris Fashion Week. Her appearance at the Schiaparelli Haute Couture show in Paris was among a series of high-profile outings that established her presence on the global fashion circuit.
The neat blazers and country-house hats associated with her earlier public appearances have given way to more extravagant styling, with elaborate dresses and a deliberately glamorous aesthetic.
She has also spoken in interviews about spin and barre classes, while her increasingly athletic appearance has become part of her carefully maintained public image.
Lady Kitty’s upbringing was divided between Britain and South Africa. After her parents’ divorce, she and her siblings, twins Eliza and Amelia and their brother Louis, spent much of their childhood in Cape Town’s upmarket Constantia, while also visiting their father’s ancestral home, Althorp.
The family moved to Cape Town to escape media scrutiny, and the children divided their time between their mother Victoria Aitken’s gated home and the Spencer estate, where Princess Diana had also spent her childhood.
Before going to university in Cape Town in 2009, Lady Kitty was presented at Le Bal des Débutantes in Paris and appeared on the cover of Tatler. Yet interviews around that period portrayed her as candid and relatively unconcerned with the formal expectations of her background.
She discussed her dislike of exercise and her enjoyment of foods including macaroni cheese, chips and flapjacks. In an interview with Harper’s Bazaar, she also spoke about her mother’s eating disorder and Diana’s widely publicised battle with bulimia, saying those experiences had made her conscious of mindfulness and wellbeing.
A new life beyond the Spencer estate
Her marriage to Lewis marked another stage in Lady Kitty’s move into an international world of wealth and fashion. The couple married in 2021 at Villa Aldobrandini, a 16th-century villa overlooking Rome, where she wore a bespoke lace gown by Dolce & Gabbana.
Lewis is chairman of The Foschini Group, which owns fashion brands including Whistles and Jigsaw. The couple have offered occasional glimpses of a private life involving the Riviera and New York’s Hamptons, while keeping much of their relationship away from public view.
Lady Kitty’s circle extends beyond the traditional aristocracy. She is close to Emma Thynn, Marchioness of Bath, and is also associated with Pixie Lott and her husband Oliver Cheshire, Idris Elba and his wife Sabrina, and fashion designer Jade Holland Cooper.
Her younger brother Louis is in line to inherit Althorp and is pursuing a career as an actor. Lady Kitty, meanwhile, has established a separate path through modelling, fashion and an international social network.
From the reserved 20-year-old photographed at a country party to a familiar face at global fashion events, her public life has moved well beyond the conventional world of the English country house.
