Alex Eagle is a material girl, though not in the 1980s Madonna sense.
The multihyphenate creative, as she’s universally dubbed, is passionate about quality materials. It’s the uncompromising thread running through everything she does: what she wears, what she designs for her clothing label Alex Eagle Studio, what she stocks in her lifestyle stores, and the spaces and furniture she creates and curates as co-founder of interior design studio Eagle + Hodges.
“I love materials that feel good against my skin. I can feel just as comfortable in a suit as a tracksuit; it’s all about the fabric. Once you get used to good fabric, you’re totally spoiled,” she enthuses, looking suitably relaxed today in gray tailored trousers paired with a baby blue pin-striped shirt worn casually opennecked with a flash of lace on show beneath. We’re sitting at a beautifully chunky George Nakashima dining table in the lobby of the residential side of St Clement, which is part of 180 The Thames (of which she is creative director). Part hotel, part residences and retail space, it occupies the southern section of the 180 Quarter, a buzzing, evolving development in London’s Temple district.
Eagle is in full flow, reclining in a vintage Eames executive chair. “I love cotton poplin. I love this lace ribbed vest we developed. I wear them every day. I’m a very tactile person in every sense, so I love our furniture. It feels good. It wears well. I like that things get ‘worn’ by the wearer in every sense, and take on that life. I don’t mind my coats being worn with love. It all comes down to material.”
It’s still early days for St Clement, Eagle + Hodges’ most recent interiors project, although it’s already been crowned a game-changer with its 180-degree River Thames view popping up all over Instagram. The latest venture from hospitality visionary Nick Jones, who stepped down from his role as CEO of Soho House in 2022, the 90-room, 15-suite hotel is at soft-launch stage which means construction teams are still on site — as is a very hands-on Jones, teaming up again on this project with longtime business partner, Mark Wadhwa, founder of the 180 Quarter, and also Eagle’s husband. Wadhwa and Eagle are quite the London power couple.
Wadhwa prefers to be the low-profile, silent partner, but he joins us briefly and enthuses about the freshness of Eagle’s vision and how the first time they met, they immediately bonded over a shared passion for design. “Are you sure it wasn’t the see-through blouse I was wearing?” Eagle quips.
Jokes aside, there can’t be many property developers with Wadhwa’s cultural pedigree: a design history degree, followed by a post-grad curatorial course at London’s RCA, and then a stint honing his aesthetics in Manhattan under the wing of Fred Hughes, the collector Svengali behind Warhol’s commercial success. Combine that with Eagle’s discerning eye, nurtured by a stylish TV-producer mother and art-dealer father, and refined by an art history degree, and their stellar furniture collection makes perfect sense. Jean Prouvé, George Nakashima, Jean Royère, Mario Bellini, Les Lalanne, Brian Clarke, Donald Judd — this blue-chip haul the duo has amassed over the years now brings character and soul to the stark, exposed concrete and Venetian plaster interiors of St Clement, living alongside simple, contemporary pieces designed by Eagle + Hodges — a vintage-meets-contemporary mix that replicates both her retail formula and personal style, with 1990s Tom Ford Gucci a particular archival favorite.
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“Great pieces really hold a room; they resonate with everyone and make people feel good,” says Eagle. “Our approach allows these spaces to evolve. The investment goes into the bones of the building: beautiful mosaic and oak floors, lovely specialist plaster wall finishes, exposed concrete — things that will last,” she adds, pointing out the lack of built-in banquettes or cabinetry at St Clement.
There’s an endearing lack of fussiness about Eagle. “I don’t like unnecessary stuff,” she says, citing accessories such as a belt, handbag, and sunglasses as the only sartorial decoration she allows herself. In interiors, this purity of purpose translates into an absence of clutter. The only things on display are books and monographs; art, including “super-functional” 18th-century cadastral maps by Richard Horwood; and floristry by Sorelle, beautifully restrained in single-specimen arrangements.
Touring the hotel later, we run into Nick Jones, quizzically inspecting a Donald Judd coffee table in the lobby. This project has been an education of sorts for the man behind the now ubiquitous Soho House look. Eagle and her interiors-firm co-founder and former schoolfriend Sophie Hodges enjoyed pushing Jones in a new direction. “We’re lucky to have worked with Nick for many years [at Soho House]. He created such an iconic look and a whole new lifestyle for hospitality, but we all wanted this to feel different. He doesn’t mind the challenge; there’s mutual respect and trust there.”
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While Eagle directs the overarching creative vision, Hodges is the production whizz with a formidable black book, having spent a decade with British textiles brand Colefax and Fowler before uniting with Eagle in 2015. Good friends who have traded visual references for decades, their collaboration has become so instinctive it verges on telepathy, says Eagle. Many of the pieces they create for projects are available to buy via their website — think deep burgundy lacquered circular tables, marble-topped coffee tables, and upholstered sofas and armchairs, which, in their pared-back simplicity, echo the ‘quiet luxury’ ethos of Belgian tastemaker Axel Vervoordt, one of Eagle’s heroes.
Defiantly minimalist and modernist, Eagle’s design approach is consistent. Whether she’s creating a tailored shirt or an L-shaped sofa, she prioritizes function and utility alongside those beautiful materials, and is a proud advocate of British craftsmanship. “It’s always been desperately important to me. We are happy to take our time to make UK manufacturing work. It’s a long-term investment. It’s a pleasure to watch it being done, with that spirit, feeling, and soul baked in. Hopefully, you feel that in all of our products,” she says.
As a mother to three young children and two older stepchildren, there are many spinning plates in her life. But she insists that these different elements are, in fact, complementary parts of one holistic whole — so much so that she is decamping from Soho to 180 The Thames, moving her family into one of the St Clement residences. She also plans to open a new Alex Eagle Studio store here in September.
Eagle’s stores are, in a sense, a distillation of her personal aesthetic, but as glossy and immaculate as this may seem at first sight, there’s always a dash of wit and irreverence at play. One of Alex Eagle Studio’s bestsellers, along with the lace, cashmere, and logo-free sportswear, is a baseball cap range bearing slogans such as ‘stretch, stretch, stretch’ and ‘bathing, bathing, bathing.’
“We’re British, we’re English, we’re a bit of a mess,” she concludes, “but through that chaos comes the charm and the soul. That’s the balance for me.”
