The news of the fashion designer’s ‘RHONY’ debut comes shortly after Jenna Lyons confirmed her return to the Bravo show

Rebecca Minkoff will be making her debut on season 15 of The Real Housewives of New York City, PEOPLE can confirm.

A source close to production tells PEOPLE that the fashion designer, who co-founded the Rebecca Minkoff brand with her brother Uri, will appear in a Friend capacity on the rebooted reality series. It won’t be Minkoff’s first time appearing on a Bravo series as she previously served as a guest judge on Project Runway.

PEOPLE reached out to Bravo for comment, though the network typically does not comment on casting rumors.

For season 14 of RHONY, Bravo unveiled a reimagined version of the longtime series and debuted a brand new cast that included Sai De Silva, Ubah Hassan, Erin Dana Lichy, Jenna Lyons, Jessel Taank and Brynn Whitfield after a recurring conflict in season 13 triggered an internal investigation about racism amongst the cast.

All six helped reboot the longtime franchise last summer when season 14 premiered. But since the season wrapped in October 2023, viewers have wondered whether Lyons would do the show again.

In March, the former J. Crew executive confirmed that she would be returning for season 15 and revealed that she would be putting up boundaries when it comes to specific aspects of her personal life.

“I have a relationship, but I would like to not name her,” Lyons told The New York Times of keeping her girlfriend Cass Bird out of the spotlight. “I want to keep her out of the press. That is my commitment to her. It’s off the table. I joined this process. She did not.”

Shortly after the fashion mogul announced she would be holding an apple alongside her costars, Taank told PEOPLE that “everyone has been patiently waiting for the announcement” and opened up about what’s to come in the new season.

“We’re all excited to come back and have a better understanding of how [filming] works.We love it so much and we love entertaining,” Taank said of the cast. “We’re gonna come back with a vengeance. It’s been a long time coming.”

The fashion publicist also shared how excited she was for fans to catch up with her twin boys Kai and Rio, who are almost three years old and have experienced “a lot” of change in their lives.

“When we started filming, they were only a year and a half,” she recalled. “So, you know, I think it’ll be interesting to people to see them now because they weren’t really talking. They were just starting to walk season 1 and they didn’t really have that much of a personality yet — they were cute and funny and chubby and bouncy and that’s pretty much it. But now, they’ve developed so much and so quickly, it is a bit of a shock to the system, I have to tell you.”