At first, it can be difficult to tell the difference between Erin Wasson’s sunlit California living room and a finely curated gallery space. Wasson, of course, is one of the world’s most celebrated supermodels, having appeared in ad campaigns for the likes of Gucci, Chanel, and Dolce & Gabbana. But even a cursory glance around her Malibu home reveals that she could have had a robust second career as an interior decorator; she has an incredible eye for design.
The aesthetic is anything but contrived: At age 17, Wasson lived above an art gallery in Dallas, where she met many artists who would become lifelong friends. “It was kind of an urban commune situation,” she recalls. “It was this compressed moment where there were all these extraordinary talents living in Dallas at the same time.” One of her neighbors from that period was figurative sculptor Erick Swenson; now his monkey head piece sits dramatically on a column in Wasson’s sitting room.
A common thread throughout Wasson’s career has been collaborating with friends, and the design of her home in Malibu was no exception. She worked hand in hand with her business partner and collaborator, interior designer Josh Evan, to reinvent her aesthetic for her new house. “We’ve been putting spaces together since we were teenagers in Texas,” Evan, who was present at the model's "Ranch Tropez"–themed nuptials in Austin last month, says. “For this house, we wanted to keep it super minimal." After a moment, he adds with a laugh: "Well, for Erin it's minimal, because she's been such a collector and maximalist over all these years."
Wasson had previously lived in Venice Beach for 16 years, but was yearning for more solitude, more space, and a less frenetic neighborhood. “I was lucky enough to take a long trip one day and wander upon this house,” she says of the one-level home that she dubs "Regency beachside style," in reference to the distinctive British design period from 1795 to 1837.
“I contacted the woman who owned it and the rest is history," Wasson says of the house, whose back side is entirely made up of sliding glass doors that open up to postcard-perfect views of the ocean. The home, however, necessitated a very different decor than Wasson’s previous Los Angeles house or her New York apartment. Whereas her Venice space was packed with art pieces—“Oh my God, it was like every nook and cranny,” Evan says—her new house is pared down to only the essentials. “It was like I was handed a job as a curator in a new museum,” Wasson says. “Before, I put a lot of things on the wall, perhaps as armor. In this place, I took a much more intellectualized approach to the whole thing.”
The result is an airy, bright space in a palette of whites and pinks. Wasson’s impressive art collection is scattered throughout every room: a Mario Lopez lamp here (“I got that at auction for $20 because it’s missing the original rattan parrot!” she says), a Robert Laughlin chair there. A visitor to her home would be forgiven for wanting to know the provenance of nearly every object, and while there's certainly a story behind each, her two couches are perhaps the most eye-catching.
In her living room sits a 1970s Raphael Raffel for Maison Honore, which Wasson cheekily calls “the croissant.” “It's always interesting when you have people around and the couch provokes different physicality out of people,” she says. In contrast, the sitting room’s sleek black piece is a deSede Terrazza by Ubald Klug, commonly referred to as a waterfall couch. “I remember being 20 years old and seeing that piece of furniture and saying, ‘That is the most interesting thing in the world. One day I'm going to own that,’” Wasson says. After being outbid dozens of times in the intervening years, Evan was able to help her finally track it down via eBay and have it shipped from the Czech Republic.
Wasson was also fortunate that her midcentury home needed virtually no renovations, and that many original details from the 1950s remained, including metallic red wallpaper in the powder room and a stunning white brick and white marble wall in her living room. “It's so groovy, I'd never seen anything like this before,” she says of the wall. “I looked at it and I said, 'Well, I don't have to do anything there.'”
It’s rare to find a homeowner who has such a personal relationship with so many of her pieces, but that’s what makes Wasson a true collector. “This house is a huge storyteller of my life,” she says. “I’m lucky enough to have everything in my home be other people's stories of which I get to be a part.”