green goddess

Legendary supermodel Amber Valletta turns to designer Ross Cassidy to help craft a truly sustainable new home in LA

- DANA THOMAS

Having first risen to fame in the 1990s, influential supermodel Amber Valletta remains very much in demand, fronting campaigns for such luxury brands as Loewe, Saint Laurent, Stella McCartney, and many others. But she is also a leading climate change activist: She serves as British Vogue’s contributing sustainability editor and the Karl Lagerfeld brand’s sustainability ambassador, and has participated in several of Jane Fonda’s Fire Drill Fridays protests in Washington, DC, where she has been arrested a few times alongside other activists. (Full disclosure: She recounted how Fonda “was there with snacks when you got out of jail” during an interview with me for my podcast, The Green Dream.)

Valletta tries to fold her pro-environmental ethos into every corner of her life, including her home. Thus, she, her fiancé, the fashion hairdresser Teddy Charles, and her friend the Los Angeles–based interior designer Ross Cassidy, have worked to turn a new hilltop house in Los Angeles into a model of sustainability.

Valletta met Cassidy about 17 years ago, when she was living in Santa Monica. Before knowing who he was, she’d pass by his office/home during her workouts, spy “these beautiful people working inside,” and wonder who they were and what they were up to. Finally, one day she crossed Cassidy on his bike, made the connection, and they immediately clicked. She hired him to help renovate the Santa Monica pad, and when she moved a few years later to the Pacific Palisades, he updated that one too.