After filming finished, Wasson resumed her bicoastal life, shuttling between her home in Santa Monica and her East Village apartment. In Los Angeles, she oversees Low Luv, her jewelry line that she’s designed and managed for five years. “My factories are in L.A., so unbeknownst to most, I’m not just rolling around in the sands of California,” she says.
The Dallas native was thrust into the modeling world when she was 15 years old, winning the 1997 Fashion!Dallas/Kim Dawson Model Search. Wasson would go on to work on campaigns for Armani and Michael Kors, serve as the face of Maybelline and Karl Lagerfeld’s collection for H&M., all the while cultivating a casual yet “sloppy chic” style, which she brought into her styling collaborations with Alexander Wang and cult skate-and-surf brand RVCA.
After her two-year deal with RVCA ended, she moved on to a partnership with French clothing line Zadig & Voltaire. “It’s interesting for me to continue to work with other people in different brands that have different perspectives,” she observes. “You’re dealing with different materials, you’re dealing with different quality, you’re dealing with a different consumer, you’re dealing with a different demographic. All of these things are wonderful challenges for me.”
One such challenge was Santos Party House, a tiny yet raucous night club that aims to bring back the old school New York nightlife experience, with an open space and a “sound system that was totally righteous.” She joined white-jeaned head-banger Andrew W.K. and backers Lucy Ekstrom and Spencer Sweeney to bring the project to fruition. “She’s also super low-key, which is easy to deal with and to work with on a project that is quite intense as anyone could, which I think is probably why she’s so successful,” says W.K.
Wasson’s role is to help “curate the whole experience,” but she admits that the experience has been an education, especially in dealing with large overhead and big expectations for the space.
“It’s New York City, let’s be real. It’s like something’s hot one second, and people don’t give a f— about it the next,” she adds.
As for the city where she’s lived for the past 12 years, Wasson has reached a certain level of tranquility in her otherwise demanding lifestyle. “There was a time when I was just out because it’s New York, it’s available,” Wasson confesses. “Now I’m like ‘you know, I did it, saw it, bought the t-shirt. I’m going to sit at home and I’m going to clean my house.’ I get off on domestication.”
Wasson does not foresee herself five years from now, age 35, and still grinding it out in New York City. Like the clothing lines, fashion campaigns, blockbuster films and the nightclubs, she’s in it not necessarily to win it, but to feel it. “I think it’s, at the very least, going to be an amazing life experience,” says W.K., of her role as Vadoma. “I imagine she is enjoying it for the experience itself, and not just a thing to do to get somewhere else.”
The end result is not to become Milla Jovovich 2.0, but rather, to try her hand at yet another opportunity that presents itself. “I just want to always know that there’s always going to be another form of creativity for me to get my hands dirty with, and that’s why I did a movie,” she concludes. “It wasn’t because I was trying to make some huge proclamation of model turned actress, and I wasn’t about to say ‘I was a model turned designer.’ If anything, I am a curator. I am simply curating my ideas. And if people like them, then f—ing God bless.”
