The Times Magazine 53teenage stepdaughters. Did she hunker down
here during lockdown? Did it feel as if they
were the only people left in central London?
“We were in the country,” she explains:
caught on-site in Windsor where she and her
husband had relocated to redevelop a hotel
and a rural rollout of the Sporting Club that
will focus on cricket and rowing.
“It was amazing,” she adds. “We did a big
walled garden and my kids learnt to plant.
For that generation, a maths GCSE is going
to matter a lot less than being able to sow
the land.”
Whether Eagle’s children are destined
for manual labour is debatable. There is
another hotel project in the works on Brighton
seafront. Eagle’s husband, Mark Wadhwa- a property mogul and businessman “in his
fifties” – owns both these sites and those of
Eagle’s boutiques. He also has a couple of
London zone one NCPs, the former Soho
vinyl factory complex in which the couple’s
apartment is located and a sizeable block on
the Strand, which houses hip magazine offices
and exhibitions for the likes of Louis Vuitton.
Most recently, it hosted a pop-up members’
club for Prada.
“He doesn’t like things being about him,”
Eagle says when I ask how she and Wadhwa
met. Together, the couple, married for eight
years, are taking Soho into a post-streetwalker,
post-Covid, perhaps even post-retail future.
What made her think this new take on
a country club could be the answer to the
coronavirus crisis?
“People are lonely,” she says. “Doing a class
is a fun way to connect that isn’t just eating or
going to a bar. I started resenting having a full
diary of dinners every night. Going for drinks
doesn’t appeal to me any more.”
Eagle stopped drinking during lockdown,
she tells me, as a “longer-term way of helping
the NHS – and to feel in control”. She doesn’t
eat much meat any more either and doesn’t
own a TV. “Most evenings I just want to go
through my emails.”
She sounds like a workaholic. “I’m just
greedy for nice things,” she says, laughing.
“I do think I’ve got a good eye. I try not to
overthink it though; I just go with my gut.”
Proof of her influencer status comes
from a catchphrase that originated among
her rather well-heeled friendship group for
finding the perfect blazer, say, or sofa cushion.
“I mean, the dream” has since become not
only an Instagram hashtag with more than
8,000 posts, but also a gilt motif on a must-
have £60 ceramic tray by of-the-moment
interiors man Luke Edward Hall (it sold out).
“We put it on a T-shirt too,” she says.
“Some people found it really obnoxious, but
it just came from everything being an edit
of ‘dream’ things.”
Eagle has been a fashion addict from a
young age: the first niece to five aunts, she
had a habit of changing her outfits several
times a day during her early years. She grew
up in Chiswick, the daughter of an art dealer
father and TV producer mother (who now
helps her run the business). She attended
More House School in Knightsbridge, which
meant the corner shop she hung around
outside as a teenager was Harvey Nichols.
“I spent what pocket money I had there
on Chanel nail varnish. I never felt nervous
going in. I always knew I wanted to work
in fashion.”
That’s perhaps why she’s as excited about
the Sporting Club clothing line as she is about
the classes it will offer. The collection will
reach a wider selection of tastes and budgets
than fencing tuition might. There are baseball
caps, hoodies, tracksuits and tennis gear all
featuring a mock nostalgic AESC crest of
crossed rackets. Her modern, handwritten
logo has the potential to become the new
Nike swoosh in some quarters.
“I don’t want it to feel elitist, because we
all wear sports clothes all day long now,” Eagle
says. “You’d feel like a dick with heels and a
blow-dry now, but ten years ago you’d never
go out in trainers. Now I wear a baseball cap
with my cashmere coat.” Albeit her current
favourite happens to be by Hermès. nalexeagle.co.uk1 Gia Couture x Alex Eagle pink ostrich shoes, £330. 2 Jake Clark HP Sauce sculpture, price on request. 3 Fernando Jorge
surrounding long earrings, £12,960. 4 Alex Eagle tortoiseshell sunglasses, £180. 5 Campbell-Rey octagonal side table, price on request.
6 Annie Costello Brown Clea gold earrings, £230. 7 Sophie Keegan 18ct gold charm, £600. All from alexeagle.co.ukEagle with former Vogue deputy editor Emily Sheffield,
left, and current Vogue deputy editor Sarah Harris, right2357GETTY IMAGES
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