WOULD YOU BUY
A £100 WATERING CAN
FROM THIS WOMAN?
f Mr Harry Selfridge was known as the
Earl of Oxford Street, Ms Alex Eagle is
perhaps the Countess of Soho – if that
doesn’t make her sound too much like
one of its historical madams.
Selfridge’s department store
transformed not only the West End’s
unfashionable western end but also
consumer culture in the early 20th
century. In the 21st – after a period in
which the usually bustling streets around
Carnaby and Wardour fell still for perhaps
the first time since Henry VIII developed the
farmlands of W1D into a parish – Alex Eagle
is mulling what will bring the punters back.
Her prediction? Fencing classes.
“Luxury is all about experience now,”
the 37-year-old former fashion PR turned
shopkeeper tells me, pressing a cup of tea into
my freshly washed hands (I can report the
cult Swedish brand Byredo’s liquid soap is
in her loo).
Hers is the name to drop among the
style cognoscenti. Eagle’s “studio” on
Lexington Street is a much envied
and imitated “curated edit” of
fashion, homeware, art and
furniture. All of which is to say,
it’s a shop – but one that had become an
international destination for the deep-
pocketed and aesthetically demanding.
It sells everything from designer watering
cans for £100 and £25 T-shirts (embellished
with slogans such as “Brutalism”, “Modernism”
and “Classicism” in Vogue font) to bespoke
suits that run into the thousands; marble
lamps by the Italian architect Ettore Sottsass
and a giant 19th-century cut-glass chandelier.
Much on display in the space, which moreresembles an achingly stylish pied-a-tèrre
than a boutique and which provides many an
Instagram backdrop among those who make
the pilgrimage, bears “price on request” labels.
Eagle, with her 67,000 followers on
Instagram, is a tastemaker extraordinaire, a
rapidly risen impresario on the luxury scene
who is patron to young artists, friend to Vogue
editors and lifestyle dealer to the One Percent.
She has retail outposts that export her taste to
shoppers at Soho Farmhouse in Oxfordshire
and Soho House Berlin too.
Her latest project is the Alex Eagle
Sporting Club, set to open in the basement of
the Lexington Street boutique. The members-
only space will offer classes run by the best
practitioners she can find, starting with yoga,
Pilates and fencing. The merch – chic branded
sporting attire – will be sold online.
Given Eagle’s pedigree as hostess, mover
and shaker, regular in Vogue and one of
Tatler’s most invited, you can imagine the
waiting list for its five-person classes (Covid
rules permitting).
Eagle is sitting across from me – in
expensively navy cashmere from her own
knitwear label and high-waisted indigo denim- at a 12-seater kitchen table in the 4,300sq ft
warehouse loft she shares with her husband
and two children in the heart of town. The
apartment, regularly pictured in Vogue and
interiors magazines, is dotted with objets,
large-scale art pieces and framed prints, many
of which are addressed personally to Eagle by
young artists she has befriended.
Among the collectors’ items is the
ephemera of kids, too – crayon marks, a pair
of highchairs. Eagle has a four-year-old son
and three-year-old daughter, as well as two
50 The Times Magazine
The fashion crowd does!
Alex Eagle is Vogue’s
favourite shopkeeper, selling
everything from designer
watering cans to feather
mules, vintage diamonds
and cult Italian furniture.
Interview by Harriet Walker
I
Agnes Hay watering can,
£100; above right, Ben Kelly’s
Column C7, price on request.
Both alexeagle.co.ukStyle!