SOPHIE HICKS ARCHITECTS

By leveraging her insider insight and competitive edge, Sophie Hicks has become fashion’s favorite architect. Here, she discusses how she keeps her competitive impulses in balance.

Every morning, Sophie Hicks walks across the roof terrace that connects her home to her architecture firm. “That’s an odd bit of routine,” she confides, dressed in a sharp collared shirt and glasses. Despite living amid the abundance of restaurants and boutiques in London’s Notting Hill neighborhood, Sophie remains steadfastly enclosed within, always eating lunch at her desk and then swimming laps in her pool once the day ends. She is, says a colleague, “working while she’s walking.”

This relentless efficiency has packed a lot into the past four decades. First, there was Sophie’s 10-year career in fashion, which included plum jobs as a fashion editor at Tatler and British Vogue in the ’80s. She also acted in a Fellini film, worked as a stylist for her friend Azzedine Alaïa, earned a degree in architecture, had three children and launched her own business while still in the midst of her studies. “It’s quite a lot,” she says, a model of British understatement.

These days, Sophie has built a reputation as “fashion’s architect,” her industry experience and eye for detail making her a favorite for luxury brands that include Paul Smith, Yohji Yamamoto and Chloé. When you throw in the successful modeling careers of her two daughters, Edie and Olympia, both of whom have graced countless magazine covers and catwalk shows, and the modeling career of her mother, Joan, in the ’50s, it all begins to sound rather glamorous. But, Sophie insists, she did not grow up in that world: “We hardly had a fashion life going on in our house. I was extremely unfashionable as a child, I can tell you,” she says.