David Lucido has always had an eye for design.
Even as a teen, he saw things others didn’t, which is likely why his mother wanted him by her side during antique shopping adventures. It’s also what led him to study graphic design at Washington University in St. Louis, Mo., several years later.
That degree landed him a job working for Nickelodeon and MTV as a graphic designer, which sounded glamorous initially, but ended up being a desk job that only made Lucido restless.
“I got sick being stuck behind a computer,” Lucido, who describes himself as a people person, recalls. “I wasn’t interacting with anybody. I had headphones on the entire day and I needed to break out of that.”
So he did.
This time Lucido focused on interior design, where instead of sitting at a desk, he was in people’s homes and businesses, interacting with clients and thriving in his new world. His hard work and dedication earned him a reputation as someone who could turn any space into one of beauty, something clearly notable in one of his most recent projects, the space that is now home to Le Bilboquet in Palm Beach.
The 35-year-old, whose studio is based in New York, had a hand in renovating two other Le Bilboquet locations — one in Sag Harbor, N.Y., and another in Manhattan. Eager to study the third location, he visited South Florida in March of last year and immersed himself in the culture of Palm Beach. “I was very impressed with how pristine everything was. It made the Hamptons look dumpy,” he says.
Shortly after that visit, the pandemic lockdown forced Lucido to design the restaurant virtually from his apartment in New York. By the fall of 2020, he was able to visit South Florida again to help bring the space to life.
“I always want my projects to stay looking like it’s on the cover of a magazine,” he says.
It’s clear that the Palm Beach location could easily grace the covers of the most prestigious design magazines. The space on Worth Avenue is housed in an Art Deco-designed building, so Lucido looked to early 20th-century French modernists as inspiration when filling it with furniture and fixtures. He also considered what materials were used in that era, such as nickel, oak and terrazzo.
Lucido was so impressed with the area that he decided to open a branch of his design studio in West Palm Beach.
Though he’s eager to eventually return home, he admitted that being in South Florida in the middle of winter certainly has its perks. “I can go outside; I can eat outside.” he says. “It’s nice having sunshine and space and all those things you don’t really have in March in New York.”