Design

Interior designer Alice Harvey inherited her love of polo from her late father. Now the sport inspires her life, she tells Catherine Gordon

Polo saved Alice Harvey’s life. Or so it seemed when she was aged 13 and being dragged around ‘dreadful’ pony shows by her mother. When the youngster was offered polo as an alternative to ‘all that jumping’, there was no hesitation. ‘I saw polo as a way of getting out of Pony Club,’ she explains. ‘Polo is such a good buzz; it combines team spirit, hand-eye co-ordination, speed, adrenalin and danger. It’s fantastic.’

The 34-year-old interior designer grew up near Haslemere, Surrey. After enjoying an idyllic education at Frensham Heights and surviving a school in Switzerland where ‘there were so many rules and I got kicked out after five weeks,’ Harvey was dispatched to Argentina by her parents. Aged 16, the polo hopeful found herself living with family friends in Carlos Casares and playing farm polo.

Instead of paying for university, Harvey’s family agreed to support her in polo until she was 21, and she moved to California to work for teacher Rege Ludwig. ‘I had such a good time. I worked really hard and I was playing my best polo. I was one-goal but I played slightly better. And when you have a cheap handicap you get given lots of polo. You don’t get paid to play, but you don’t pay to play either.’

So began six years of polo: summers in England and winters abroad, including a stint training youngsters in Zimbabwe for Johnny Campbell. But Harvey has no regrets about not following her friends to university – the polo circuit had plenty of its own lifelessons. ‘I had to deal with adults the whole time,’ she explains. ‘If you wanted to get on a team, you had to speak to grown-ups. At university, you sit around getting stoned, you’re not meeting wealthy and successful people. Now my circle of friends is amazing.’

But all good things come to an end, and eventually Harvey returned to the UK at 24 to take a break from polo and look for a ‘proper job’. She started edging towards interior design, working at various wallpaper and fabric companies, including Cole & Son. Then, at the beginning of 2007 came the call from FSI, the interior design company set up 30 years ago by Harvey’s late father, Julian, who passed away last year after a four-year battle with cancer: ‘My father used to play polo when we were kids, until his late 30s when the business was so busy that he stopped. Many of his clients were polo-related. His main client was the Sultan of Brunei, who plays polo, among others including HPA Chairman Christopher Hanbury.’

FSI had had their heads down for so long, going from project to project, that they had never done any marketing and now they wanted someone to come in to help them look towards the future. ‘It’s nice for me to carry on the work,’ admits Harvey. ‘Just like a mini-Julian.’

FSI provides a ‘turnkey’ service, offering everything from finding a property to sourcing the soft furnishings. ‘We start at the beginning, look at the fabric of the building and work out what can and can’t be done,’ says Harvey. But there can sometimes be a clash between what the client wants and what can realistically be achieved: ‘You have to be sympathetic to the building, and lots of people demand something which actually cannot be done.’

FSI’s nine-strong team is based in Fulham, west London, and has a collection of building teams and project managers who move between projects. ‘We recently finished

a house in Gloucester Square,’ recalls Harvey, ‘and the neighbours banged on the door and asked the builders: “Who do you work for?” They gave them our number and we literally moved the builders from one house to the next. Interior design is all word of mouth.’

One of FSI’s strongest selling points is the standard of finish the firm delivers. ‘Because we use original artisans, everything is done properly, and that is why we are expensive – you are getting the real thing. We work on anything from £500,000 refurbs to larger projects stretching into the millions.’ One such project is The Rutihof Equestrian Club in Zurich for the patron of the Black Bears polo team and three-times Veuve Clicquot Gold Cup winner, Urs Schwarzenbach. Home to international show jumper Steve Guerdat, the Rutihof is a large wooden barn with clubrooms, bars and a viewing gallery.

But contrary to what you might expect, FSI’s polo-related clients don’t always want their properties to have the classic ‘polo look’. Of course, there will be the usual collection of player bronzes and polo prints, but other than that, Harvey has to stretch her imagination. ‘People assume designers have a specific style,’ she explains. ‘But if you are a good designer, you can turn your hand to anything.’

Now that she is an established interior designer, Harvey has returned to polo, having failed to find anything to replace its unique adrenaline rush. ‘I play farm polo every weekend with Alan Kent in Cowdray,’ she says. ‘Alan was England’s best young player and someone I admired when I was young. He has around 350 ponies and I can play 20-goal chukkas there, which is a high standard of polo. I can have a seriously good time but with none of the seriousness.’ Harvey has clearly returned to polo with a new attitude. ‘I’m 10 years older now and more relaxed. When you’re 18, you’re playing polo full-time and it is your job. I took it very seriously. Now I can play for fun.’

In her eight-year break from polo, Harvey has seen the game become more popular with women. ‘Polo is more accessible, there were so few clubs before. When I started playing there were 250 playing members at Cowdray and only three were women,’ she recalls. But women still have to fight for their place on the field. ‘A lot of men don’t like women playing and I can understand why – it does compromise them, it is a physical game. If a man wants to ride me off as he would another man, he will hurt me. But I would like to think that I’m good enough to know that he’s coming in for a ride-off and I will either pull myself out of the way or deal with it.’

But on the other hand, women can be at an advantage. ‘Girls have to read a game before a guy because guys will always be physically stronger than you. So if you can slightly anticipate and get in front, then you’ve beaten them. I also think women have a slightly better intuition with horses.’

So what does 2008 have in store for Alice Harvey? ‘I didn’t play any tournaments in 2007, the season was a wipe out, my father was ill and the rain was a nightmare. I’m hoping that I might play a few more this year.’ The boys had better watch out.

1 Barn conversion, now Swiss private members’ club 2 Alice at Cowdray Park 3 Private residence, Belgravia 4 Concept for the Swiss private members’ club 5 Private residence, Kensington