Driving force: Petra Ecclestone

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Lydia Slater|Es Magazine. Photographs|Nicky Emmerson. Styled|Nicky Yates

10 April 2012

It is a chilly, overcast Monday on Marylebone High Street. But as office workers hurry home in the gathering twilight, they are forced to sidestep a vortex of high-octane glamour. Outside Matches, a gleaming monster of a Formula 1 racing car is parked at the kerb. Around it swarms a gibbering crowd of paparazzi, desperate to get shots of Daisy Lowe, Bernie Ecclestone, Lily Allen and other glossy Londoners.

Inside the shop Jodie Harsh is DJing, Henry Conway is flouncing and in the middle of this madness, wearing a multicoloured Peter Pilotto minidress and teetering gladiator heels, the glamazonian Petra Ecclestone is holding court in front of a TV crew. She has thrown the bash to celebrate the arrival in store of her stealth-luxe men's clothing line, Form.

A few days later, in the middle of a rainstorm, we meet again at La Brasserie on Brompton Cross. This time Petra is more modestly clad in grey cardi, jeans and leopard-print T-shirt. She's soaked to the skin: her unfashionably long, Gold Amex-coloured curls cling, mermaid-like, to her shoulders, and her mascara trickles on to her bronzed cheeks. Despite her dishevelled appearance, every man in the room turns to look as she hurries to the table, smiling apologetically.

But it's not so much Petra's undoubted prettiness that draws the eye as that unmistakeable Ready-brek glow that only comes with enormous wealth. At the age of 20, the heiress, with her sister, to her father's F1 billions, Petra could undoubtedly buy out every other well-heeled diner in the room and still have enough spare change for a yacht or two.

It would be easy to dislike her on sight. But having met her several times, I have to concede a sneaking admiration for the girl. I'm not at all sure that, if our circumstances were reversed, I wouldn't just allow myself to wallow in gentle billows of Daddy's moolah. Petra is made of sterner stuff. 'People see a ditsy blonde,' she says, 'and I like to surprise them.'

She's determined to build Form into an internationally recognised fashion empire. 'I'd like it to be as big as Tom Ford or Ralph Lauren,' she says. 'I wouldn't be trying so hard if I didn't think it was achievable.' So she's in the office every day at 8.30am (after a gym workout), and stays until nightfall. 'I'm designing and drawing but also running the whole business. I kind of do everything,' she says. Woe betide any employee who falls for that party-girl appearance: she's a strict boss, whose employees 'have to know their place' and, according to her collaborators, a nit-picking perfectionist.

When her PRs were sending out the invitations to the Matches party, she sent round a special pen that she insisted they used to write the guests' names; she also tasted every canapé beforehand. 'My parents taught me that if you going to do something, do it properly or don't bother,' she says. 'I don't particularly trust other people, so I prefer to do things myself.'

Perhaps that's why earlier in the year she separated from her design colleague, her father's tailor Edward Sexton (who previously inducted Stella McCartney into the mysteries of pattern-cutting). 'I think he is amazingly talented,' she says diplomatically, 'but it just had to come to an end. Sometimes artists don't make good collaborators; it's hard working with such a strong personality.'

Now she's doing all Form's designing herself, using the basic patterns established by Sexton. And so far she's doing rather well. She was picked out this summer by a fashion magazine as one of the top five up-and-coming designers, alongside Gareth Pugh and Henry Holland. And Form is impressively sophisticated. It nods discreetly at its F1 inspiration with its slim fit, and the detailing at the shoulder and elbow that echoes the padding on racing drivers' overalls, though the palette is subtle charcoal and camel, rather than fluorescent orange with logos.

Petra was inspired by the legendary drivers she hung out with in her childhood. 'It was rawer then, more fun to be around, seeing their lifestyles, their clothes, the boats, planes and the whole image. Ayrton Senna was the most amazing person: so down-to-earth and humble, but also dark, tall and handsome; everything about him was incredible.'

And who does she like best these days, I wonder? 'I don't really have a favourite driver, but I like Lewis Hamilton and Nelson Piquet Jr.' Nelson Piquet Jr? 'A lot,' she says firmly. 'I've known him since I was born. He's so sweet, such a nice guy.' Considering that Piquet Jr's confession of deliberately crashing his Renault has blown a giant hole in the already battered reputation of F1, this is perhaps rather injudicious. 'I'm not allowed to talk about it,' says Petra of the scandal, 'and I don't know, because my dad doesn't really talk about what's going on; he keeps it at work.'

Naturally, a number of F1's current drivers have been spotted wearing Form. 'Lewis Hamilton, Jenson Button, Mark Webber and Sebastian Vettel have worked with me on charity events and fashion shows, so to thank them, I always give them a nice piece from the current collection. However, I have seen some of the drivers wearing Form who I haven't gifted so I guess they are buying it,' she says. But then racing drivers are in the lucky position of being able to afford Petra's clothes, what with jumpers costing £418 and a brown nappa leather bomber jacket coming in at a whisker under £2,000.

Such prices don't suit the mood of the times, and even with the security of her own trust fund backing her, Petra is not immune to the chill winds of recession. 'As soon as you say you're calling on behalf of a new menswear brand, they just put the phone down on you,' she complains of department store buyers. 'It is really hard, especially in America. Big stores are dropping brands they had for 20 years. I've finally realised how hard it is to make money.'

So she's focusing on expanding elsewhere. Form has just gone into Dubai's Boutique 1 and, a couple of days after we meet, Petra is off to Berlin to launch Form at high-end store The Corner. 'It's a real achievement to get in,' she says. Especially after the launch had to be postponed because of Bernie's disastrous remarks about Hitler in July (he said 'he could command a lot of people, able to get things done' and announced that his friend Max Mosley, son of the British fascist Oswald, would make a good prime minister).

Petra was said to have been very upset. 'It was annoying,' she admits. 'It wasn't the best timing. But hopefully it will be history now.' So did she tell him off? 'No, because I know the way the press twist everything. He didn't mean it that way,' she says loyally. 'My dad's not anti-Semitic. The majority of his friends are Jewish.'

Petra is distinctly protective of her diminutive and eccentric father, especially since his divorce from Slavica, her statuesque Croatian mother, earlier this year. She calls him several times a day and has him round to dinner at her house every week (she prefers not to go round to his place, she says, because after years of cosseted marriage, he's teaching himself how to cook).

Meanwhile, Slavica appears to have finally woken up to the fact that she's in line for the biggest divorce payout in history. She's bought herself a top-of-the-range Gulfstream jet (bigger than Bernie's), missed the Matches party because she was skiing, and two days later, headed to India with a gang of friends. 'She dedicated her whole life to the three of us, and she's turned 51, so she's allowed to be selfish,' says Petra, who admits her father is 'really difficult to live with; everything has to be his way'.

Even so, the divorce, after 24 years of marriage, clearly came as a shock, not least to Bernie who insisted for ages that Slavica had left simply because she was fed up with the noise the builders made doing up their house.

'It's not an ideal situation,' sighs Petra. 'You miss the small things that you used to take for granted, and spending Christmas and birthdays together. But it's early days and quite fresh; maybe a strong friendship will come along. And it's not like anybody died.'

She harbours secret dreams that her parents might get back together - 'There is always hope' - but rolls her eyes in horror at the much more likely prospect that they'll meet other partners. 'If my dad got another girlfriend, the poor cow! We'd make her life a living hell,' she says, only half joking. Indeed, I wouldn't envy anybody who dared to step into Slavica's shoes.

The Ecclestones were always a close family. Bernie's enormous wealth (his fortune is estimated at £2.4 billion) made them wary of letting in outsiders, and Petra and Tamara, her elder sister by four years, were brought up by Slavica herself. 'I've never had a nanny,' says Petra. 'And Mum never left us on our own. If she travelled with Dad, she always took us.'

So her early years were spent globetrotting. 'Mum was so into me seeing different cultures. I've seen the whole world already, so it's quite boring now,' she confesses. 'I don't really like travelling; I'd rather stay at home.'

Both Slavica and Bernie come from working-class backgrounds. Bernie started out selling pens at Petticoat Lane market, and Slavica, who ended up modelling for Armani, is the daughter of a factory worker and a fireman. 'She always taught me about the value of money,' says Petra. 'We never just got presents, we had to earn them. So if I got good grades at school, or won a netball match, I'd be taken shopping.' At home, Slavica insisted on washing up by hand, did the family's ironing, and cooked supper herself every night. 'My parents dedicated their whole lives to me and my sister,' says Petra. 'My dad always made time for us, however hard he worked, and even if he had a crap day at the office, he would never take it out on us.'

Despite the Ecclestones' best efforts, their daughters' wealth raised hackles. At prep school, Petra remembers being excluded from games because her shoes came from Milan. 'They said you had to have Russell & Bromley shoes to play,' she says. 'I didn't understand why I was the outcast. I grew up thinking everyone was the same. Everyone had cars and everyone had planes.' She says she only realised her mistake when a teacher asked her which airline she was flying on holiday and looked taken aback when she answered, rather puzzled, 'Daddy's.'

At the independent girls' school Francis Holland, she made a determined effort to fit in. 'I pretended to be "street",' she says, 'and it went terribly wrong. I thought I was Vicky Pollard. I gelled my hair back into a ponytail and wore Reebok trainers and pink Adidas tracksuits. It wasn't a good look,' she giggles self-deprecatingly. 'When people saw me, they were like, "What are you doing?" Nobody was fooled.'

After that, she flirted with the usual careers open to pretty young heiresses, but didn't enjoy modelling and was too shy (and too wise) to go ahead with any of the reality TV projects that were offered to her. Eventually, she decided to study fashion. 'I'd always liked fashion design and done drawings,' she says. She won a place at Central Saint Martins, but then decided she wouldn't bother waiting and came up with the idea of a collection based on Formula 1. Her father showed the drawings to Edward Sexton, who was duly impressed; Petra was allowed to access her trust fund for seed capital, and a label was born. So far, so easy, as she herself admits. 'I honestly feel bad for young designers who come out of university and want to start a brand. I really don't know how they do it. I'm finding it really hard, and that's with financial backing.'

But she has certainly worked hard, too. She sold the first collection to Harrods on her own, persuading the store's menswear buyer to meet her and closing the deal. Form became the third-highest-selling label on its floor, outselling Dior menswear. Petra is obsessed with building her brand, and is about to become still more so, since she's launching a less expensive womenswear line, called Petra, early next year. 'I don't really enjoy holidays,' she admits. 'I'm too much of a workaholic. I take my laptop and my BlackBerry with me and I'm ringing the office every day checking what's going on. I'm a control freak.' A childhood bout of meningitis has left her with a bad case of hypochondria: she's forever washing her hands, and was first in the queue at the doctor's for Tamiflu. She's inherited her father's drive just as clearly as she has her mother's leggy glamour. 'Though I think stress will kill me long before I reach his age,' she says.

Luckily, she has managed to land herself a rather more laid-back partner, in the shape of James Stunt, a wealthy ex of Camilla Al Fayed, who owns a gambling company for VIPs called Betfair Profit Select, and collects art and vintage Pétrus. He does his best to persuade her to chill out and turn off her BlackBerry occasionally. 'But he knows work keeps me sane. I'd go mad without it.'

They first locked eyes at a party thrown by Jay-Z and Beyoncé, before a mutual friend got them together on a blind date. That was two and a half years ago. Now they share Petra's new £25 million Eaton Square house with her four dogs, his wines, and their separate art collections. She knows he's 'the one' but is in no rush to get married. 'I'm only 20!' she protests.

In fact, she's astonishingly level-headed. Neither she nor her boyfriend drink at all, despite all those rare wines, and Petra says her favourite off-duty activity is watching TV and walking the dogs. The idea of falling out of nightclubs, or dresses, fills her with horror. 'I never want my parents to be embarrassed by me,' she says. 'I always wanted to make them proud.'

They should be. For Petra has pulled off something far more diffi cult to achieve than mere business success: remaining likeable, grounded and (almost) unpretentious despite her vast wealth and privilege.

Hair by Michael Charalambous for Nyumba salon. Make-up by Charlotte Reid at One Make-up using Elemis skincare and MAC make-up.. Fashion assistant: Orsolya Szabo. Hair assistant: Michael Hadjiyianni. Shot on location at La Brasserie, 272 Brompton Road, SW3 (labrasserielondon.com)

Driving force: Petra Ecclestone

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