American heiress Ariana Rockefeller: ‘There’s something about the solace of being with your horse’

In a grassy meadow on a farm in Hampshire, Ariana Rockefeller prepares to mount a dark bay thoroughbred by the name of Echo. Normally this would be a simple matter for Rockefeller. But he’s a borrowed steed, and she’s wearing a billowing Carolina Herrera skirt for our shoot, so the logistics are rather complicated.

And then there’s the fact that she had a serious fall two months ago and shattered her pelvis, sacrum and ribs. No wonder her mother, Diana Rowan Rockefeller, who has flown over to London from the US for the weekend, seems anxious as her daughter negotiates stirrups and skirt. But Ariana herself looks entirely unperturbed.

‘This is the first time I’ve ridden since I fell off. It feels so good to be back on board,’ she says in her soft mid-Atlantic drawl, the product of a life spent in Massachusetts, New York, Maine and, more recently, Europe. She had her accident while jumping her horse in the Netherlands.

‘It was definitely the worst fall I’ve ever had, but that’s horses, and it’s given me time to get really healthy and reflect,’ she says cheerfully. Most recently, she’s been recovering at the private King Edward VII’s Hospital in Marylebone. And now, she and Echo can pose unflappably for the cameras despite the odd gust of wind sending clouds of fabric swirling out behind them.

Rockefeller says she inherited her passion for all things equestrian from her mother – a fearless rider on the hunting field in America, Britain and Ireland – and from her grandfather, David Rockefeller, who was still driving his horse and carriage at the age of 101. Ariana, meanwhile, has competed in amateur showjumping competitions in America and Europe, but what she really loves is training horses and watching elite riders perform; she has recently joined a discreet syndicate of women who own a horse that they hope will compete at the highest level internationally.

‘I love every minute of the horse world,’ she explains. ‘I feel like it’s my refuge, the horses. They are animals and they don’t care who you are. It’s less about being competitive, it’s more just the love of being a horse girl.’

Equestrian sport has a long history of attracting blue blooded riders, and modern-day showjumping is now a particularly high-octane mix of old and new money and high fashion. It has drawn in royalty such as Charlotte Casiraghi,11th in line to the throne of Monaco and a face of Chanel, and Sheikh Ali bin Khalid Al-Thani, from the ruling family of Qatar. Then there is Greek shipping heiress Athina Onassis, plus Roman Abramovich’s daughter Sofia, together with Silicon Valley heiresses and the offspring of numerous Forbes 500 families.

It would not be unusual to see Jessica Springsteen, Eve Jobs and Jennifer Gates (the daughters of Bruce, Steve and Bill respectively) going head-to-head in a Barcelona arena over jumps measuring 1.6m in, or at the Royal Windsor Horse Show, or jumping off for big prize pots at the Winter Equestrian Festival in Wellington, Palm Beach. Jessica Springsteen was part of the US team that won Olympic silver in Tokyo last year, while Eve Jobs is a member of the US team at FEI Nations Cup competitions around the world as well as recently becoming a spokes model for Louis Vuitton.

Not to be outdone, Jessica Springsteen has modelled for Ralph Lauren and is now the face of Tommy Hilfiger’s new equestrian range. Horses, it seems, are now à la mode.

It helps to be rich in that world, because the costs of competing on the global circuit are eye-popping, with equine superstars changing hands for millions. Then there is the cost of upkeep at about £30,000 per year per horse. And you could easily spend the same again on vets, physios, equine dentists, nutritionists, shiatsu masseurs and thalasso therapy sessions, not to mention cranial osteopathy, acupuncture and stem-cell therapy – all for the horse, not the rider. A top show jumper is treated with as much loving care as a Premiership footballer.

If you plan to fly your steed across continents to compete, expect to pay about £18,000 for a return ticket from the US to the UK. Unless you come from tech royalty – or actual royalty – you need the support of a super wealthy patron who owns the horse and pays the overheads. As for the rewards, with sponsors such as Rolex, Longines, Hermès, Loro Piana and Gucci, the winnings can be healthy: a €1 million prize is not unheard of. Scott Brash, the son of a small-time builder from Peebles in Scotland, became a millionaire and won team gold at his first Olympics in London – in his mid-20s.

From another point of view, showjumping is a more egalitarian sport than most. Men compete against women, and age is no bar – as Nick Skelton proved when he scooped individual gold at Rio in 2016, aged 58. He achieved this feat on his seventh Olympic attempt, aboard the aptly named Big Star, a horse no money could buy. It was rumoured the animal’s owners, recycling tycoon Gary Widdowson and his wife, Beverley, turned down an offer from one Donald Trump to buy Big Star – perhaps he liked the name?

Of course, Rockefeller fits right into the gilded world of showjumping today. Her family have been American aristocracy for five generations. Her great-great grandfather was John D Rockefeller Sr, who founded Standard Oil in 1870, having started his working life as an assistant bookkeeper. He was America’s first billionaire, with a fortune worth nearly two per cent of the national economy.

Relatively speaking, he is generally agreed to be the richest American ever. Her great-grandfather was financier John D Rockefeller Jr, who funded the building of the Rockefeller Center, while her grandfather, the coach-driving David, served as chair of the family-associated Chase Manhattan bank (now JP Morgan Chase) from 1969 to 1981.

The family still possesses one of the world’s largest fortunes, but they have always liked to give away substantial chunks. John D Rockefeller Jr donated $537 million to charity over his lifetime (worth well over 10 times that in today’s money). David, who died in 2017, gave away about $2 billion over his lifetime. In 2018 David and his wife Peggy Rockefeller’s art collection sold for charity at a days-long auction at Christie’s, New York.

Valued at $500 million, it made more than $835 million. Ariana herself is involved with the nonprofit David Rockefeller Fund, which focuses on the arts, climate and the justice system. She’s also committed to God’s Love We Deliver, a New York charity that delivers healthy food to seriously ill people in the city who cannot afford proper nutrition.

‘This year they expect to deliver three million meals,’ she says. ‘I am so proud because even during the pandemic, they never closed their doors when people were so scared for their own health.’ Her background–a degree in political science at Columbia University in NY, followed by a stint interning with Kofi Annan at the United Nations – was also partly dictated by her heritage: ‘I felt it was part of my family history,’ she explains. ‘My great-grandfather gave the land for the United Nations to be built on, and then my grandfather was involved in the building of the UN and was very passionate about international relations.’

After diplomacy came design, and in 2011 she launched an eponymous lifestyle and fashion brand, starting with clothes then moving on to handbags, working with a former executive at American leather brand Coach, and opening a pop-up shop in SoHo, New York, in 2014. Inspiration for her label came from her grandmother Peggy Rockefeller, and her first collection riffed on the Picasso painting Femme et Chien Sous un Arbre, which hung in her childhood home.

She closed the business in 2019 but says that she still loves fashion and is on the books of Select Model Management. When we meet in the extremely smart and very discreet members-only Sloane Club in Chelsea, she arrives in leather leggings and an oversized camel pullover.

She’s 40 but looks younger, and, despite minimal make-up and having come straight from a heavy personal training session, she’s strikingly elegant. At New York’s Met Gala this year Ariana caused a stir by wearing an old dress of Peggy’s. Designed by Ferdinando Sarmi in 1954 in gold brocade with a train, it quietly outclassed the more outré confections on parade.

Yet while she seems comfortable on a red carpet it’s on a horse that Ariana feels most at home. ‘You don’t communicate with words, obviously – it’s just all feelings,’ she says. ‘I would say training my horses at home is my happy place.’

Her parents first sat her on a pony at the age of three at home in the countryside outside New York. Diana and David Rockefeller Jnr were keen to keep her and her sister, Camilla, 37, sheltered. These days Ariana’s horsey circle includes her fellow riders, trainers and, especially, the grooms who help look after her three horses.

‘We spend a lot of time together so you become close, and sometimes they are basically your therapist, too.’ And as for showjumping’s gilded image? ‘It is not as glamorous as people think,’ she says with a shrug. ‘You’re living out of a suitcase and it’s early starts and late finishes. You are covered in dirt most of the time, and sometimes you are buried in it.’

For most of her adult life and before her nine-year marriage to the entrepreneur Matthew Bucklin ended in 2019, home was New York, but Ariana spent lockdown with her three horses in the West Midlands. Renting in Stratford-upon-Avon at Skelton’s showjumping yard, she trained with his partner, Laura Kraut.

‘Lockdown was an amazing time for me to bond with my horses as I was with them six days a week. We did a lot of hacking out around this beautiful English countryside. Usually we are on the road all the time, or I was backwards and forwards in New York for family business [she serves on the Next Generation Advisory Council of Rockefeller Capital Management], so it was nice to just focus on my horses.’

She has now moved them to a yard two hours from Amsterdam to make travelling on the continent easier. She lives in a flat at the stables, because, she says, ‘Home is where the horses are. There is very little furniture but I just love looking out to see my horses at pasture. When you come from a well-known family, there’s something about the peace and solace of being in a stable with your horse.