Simon Baker finds love with Laura May Gibbs after announcing split from wife Rebecca Rigg

Five weeks after the shock news Simon Baker and his wife Rebecca Rigg had split comes word The Mentalist star is enjoying the company of designer Laura May Gibbs.

Having asked the universe for “some great good” following a “shocker” year marked by natural disasters, the pandemic and a marriage break-up, actor Simon Baker is enjoying the healing vibes and holistic company of Australian athleisurewear designer Laura May Gibbs.

The news that Baker and Gibbs are an item comes five weeks after the entertainment world was left reeling by news The Mentalist star and his actor wife Rebecca Rigg — a “wonderful” woman he maintained he never stopped “courting … with romantic gestures” — had split after three decades together.

Australian athleisurewear designer Laura May Gibbs. Picture: Instagram

Baker, 51, is believed to have met Gibbs, about 36, in Byron Bay.

The designer keeps a studio there and Baker has a 6.8ha farm at nearby Nashua, the property purchased in 2015 to give his three LA-raised children an experience of the Lennox Head community that nurtured the actor after his parents divorced during his childhood.

Gibbs is the founder of sustainable activewear label Nagnata, which she launched in 2014.

Her sister, Hannah, a textile designer, is her partner in the business.

The Hills Grammar student has slogged her way to the top of the local industry after being recruited by fashion designer Leona Edmiston in 2003 for a straight-out-of-high-school job as a product development manager and assistant designer.

In 2008 Gibbs left Edmiston to work for sass & bide designers Sarah-Jane Clarke and Heidi Middleton as a fit model and design room assistant.

Rebecca Rigg and Simon Baker at Byron Bay

The six-month role later led to positions with denimwear brand Denim & Thread (2009), Insight 51 (2009-2013), Alice McCall (2015) and Tigerlily (2016-2017).

Gibbs also dabbled in fashion styling before deciding to focus on Nagnata — a brand born of her devotion to yoga — in 2017.

The company, stocked globally by Net-A-Porter, Selfridges and Goop, boasts an annual turnover of more than $1 million.

While Baker’s separation from Rigg, 53, shocked the local industry in January, it’s believed the couple first separated months earlier.

Baker has previously said Rigg, who he met when both were appearing in the Aussie soap E-Street in 1991 and married in 1998, was “the greatest woman any man could ever hope to make a life with”.

Baker loves the Aussie beach lifestyle. Picture: Dan Himbrechts/AAP

Like Rigg, the boho-styled Gibbs, who was always regarded as a nature lover, shuns high glamour.

‘I’ve never resonated with a woman that’s too done up all the time,” she told RUSSH magazine. “That’s not my lifestyle.

“It’s become the new normal for women to do these cosmetic procedures. Injecting toxins to avoid wrinkles, but it’s counterintuitive to your health.

“While I have no judgment for those who choose to do this … I personally feel inhibiting a woman’s ability to fully express through her face, smile lines and all, takes away from her true beauty rather than enhance it. Why do we all want to look the same? I try to keep it real.”

Neither Baker, who directed his first film, Breath, in 2017, and starred in 2020’s High Ground, nor Gibbs could not be reached for comment yesterday.