INVITING US TO HER FAMOUS FAMILY’S SURREY ESTATE

ON LOVE, LIFE AND LEARNING FROM HER HOTEL TYCOON FATHER SIR ROCCO

EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW AND PHOTOS

(RIGHT AND ABOVE) DRESSES: SERAPHINA LONDON. SHOES: DEE OCLEPPO

The entrepreneurial Forte family (below, from left) Lydia, Irene, Charles, Sir Rocco and his sister Olga Polizzi. Irene’s grandfather Charles founded their hugely successful hotel business after immigrating from Italy

For someone whose father is one of the most famous hotel magnates in the world, fellow entrepreneur Irene Forte isn’t very good at kicking back and relaxing.

“I take what I call ‘workations’, when I work from nice places,” says Sir Rocco’s 32-year-old daughter with wife Aliai, welcoming HELLO! to the Forte family’s 1,800-acre Surrey estate – where the charming fivebedroom Ripley Cottage, in the grounds of the main house, is the place Irene calls home when not in London.

It was here the founder of beauty brand Irene Forte Skincare and her then fiancé, technical entrepreneur Felix Winckler – they have since married – decamped when the first lockdown hit, along with her sister Lydia, brotherin-law Dimitri Chandris and their young son Johnny, as well as her brother Charles and his girlfriend Georgie.

“It was a family decision that we would all be together,” she tells us. “Then the first weekend, my sister went down with Covid and three days later, my dad, then me, so we all ended up isolating in different rooms.

“Once we were able to all hang out, though, it was lovely. Before the pandemic, I was travelling three times a week for work and I’d done that for years, so to have that much quality time with the family and to get to see so much of my young nephew was really nice.”