October 5, 2025When Vanessa Alexander was 14 years old — the time in a young person’s life when their days are typically dominated by friends, school and all the growing pains associated with being a teenager — she set off on a two-year sailing trip with her parents that took her to exotic ports of call, from Portugal to Morocco to Barbados.
Alexander is the youngest of five, but because eight years separated her from her next oldest sibling, “I had an only-child version of life in a way,” she says. A family tragedy some years prior, which in part prompted the boat excursion, had refocused the family’s priorities. “I got to do a lot of stuff with my parents, because they realized how fleeting things can be and began prioritizing experience.”
The first move her family made once back on terra firma in their native Los Angeles was the gut remodel of a Spanish Colonial house in Santa Monica, designed by her mother with Alexander specifying everything for her own room. “Both my parents loved design and architecture — my father was in the world of building, and my mother had a Japanese antiques store in Santa Monica,” says Alexander, who accompanied her mother on buying trips to hubs like Tokyo and Kyoto.
It was the path less traveled that most appealed to her. “We would go into these little villages and walk into spaces through curtains to some back storage unit and pick things for pennies. We were blowing dust off of antiques and asking, ‘How much is this?’ ”
Alexander studied philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley, and then went into the film industry, producing an independent movie and working as a manager for actors, writers and directors for a decade. After meeting her husband, Steve, at the Sundance Film Festival in 1996, she “started doing houses as a side hustle,” she says, “to flex a different creative muscle.”
Those houses, located in West Hollywood, received immediate attention, especially from people in the entertainment industry, and word of her design talent traveled along the Hollywood design grapevine.
A young actress took notice and asked Alexander to redo her Venice home. The project was published, and before Alexander knew it, she had left management and created a new career for herself. “It’s all a bit of a blur,” she says. “Things started to take off, and suddenly it was a real business.”
For Alexander, an especially pivotal project was a home in Malibu’s Serra Retreat community, created in 2011 for herself, Steve and their children. Designed with architect Michael Kovac, the house, she says, as “an early contemporary barn situation, and really sophisticated.” Alexander would go on to craft two more homes for her family in Point Dume, a sleepy, idyllic corner of Malibu that hosts all manner of creatives.
She soon became particularly known for her mindfully elevated take on a California point of view. “To some people, ‘California style’ connotes slipcovers and the beach,” Alexander says. “A true California aesthetic embraces the environment, accounts for light and shadows and emphasizes living beyond your square footage. The feeling could exist anywhere. It could be in the city, or in the mountains.”
The surrounding mountains became an integral part of Alexander’s inspiration for the flow and vibe of the interiors of an Aspen, Colorado, house. The New York–based firm Gabellini Sheppard, working with local firm Eigelberger Architecture and Design, handled the architecture in collaboration with developer Joshua Gurwitz. The home is “inspired by American modernism and Japanese architecture for a modern take on traditional Japanese design,” says Colin Martin, a partner at Gabellini Sheppard. “Spectacular vistas are carefully framed through floor-to-ceiling windows, and natural materials that match the surroundings are utilized throughout.” These materials include charred wood, burnt using the Japanese shou sugi ban technique, which clads the building and extends inside.
A marriage of sensibilities and styles resulted in a house that “holds up to the mountains and the views and the expanses beyond,” Alexander says. “Architecturally, it’s quite strong, with a real power to the form, which feels very rugged and weighty in that environment.”
Where that strength could have been overwhelming, Alexander reined it in. Such is the case in the great room, which includes an open dining area with a soaring, asymmetrically pitched ceiling from which hangs a counterweighted contemporary brass pendant that masterfully tempers the myriad angles.
Conical, a dyed-and-stitched-hemp piece by Lawrence Calver (one of several artworks in the house curated by Creative Art Partners) provides a stunning backdrop for Pierre Jeanneret chairs placed around a custom walnut dining table set on a vintage African Tuareg mat.
Here, as throughout, Alexander balanced the collectible with the hardy for the couple and their three children, all active and athletic, who can go directly from mountain biking or skiing to the dinner table without worrying about anything being too precious.
The office boasts an ebonized-oak desk with an oblong top, paired with a vintage bird chair. The desk lamp is by Kai Ruokonen.
Alexander took a similar approach in the breakfast nook, where Carlo Scarpa Monk chairs from 1stDibs accompany a casual banquette. In the living room, Pierre Yovanovitch walnut Woody chairs sit opposite a deep, low-backed custom sectional that can accommodate any scenario, from family gatherings to casual cocktails. “Even though the room has this great height in the ceiling, we wanted things to be a little bit more low-slung European style,” Alexander notes. “We didn’t want to interrupt the flow, physically or energetically.”
A Japanese chair from the Meiji period is a nod to Alexander’s early training in such acquisitions, and the coffee table by Sophie Gelinet and Cedric Gepner is the sort of artful furnishing she naturally gravitates toward. The uninterrupted view to Aspen Mountain through the floor-to-ceiling windows is spectacular, but the powerful Comité de Proyectos bar cabinet, from Galerie Philia, commands attention too, thanks to its large legs dramatically fringed with sisal fibers.
“The house feels really solid and beautiful in the way it inhabits its space,” Alexander says. “It’s warm and textural.” The upstairs lounge, boasting high triangular windows, holds a Le Bambole sofa and slipper chair — originally designed by Mario Bellini in 1972, presented with the Compasso d’Oro award in 1979 and acquired on 1stDibs for this decidedly 2025 house.
The trundle room centers on a platform bed, which Alexander softened with a wall of custom gray fabric panels. Conversely, the sitting area off the primary bedroom is hardened by a custom brass fire surround that extends dramatically to the ceiling. Sheepskin-covered Arnold Madsen Clam chairs, a green-marble Francesco Balzano coffee table and carved-wood-block stools are grounded, timeless and of the earth.
With its bold, natural materials and organic palette, the house is at home in the Colorado mountains. “Our work is driven by a sense of place, by the environment and by lifestyle,” Alexander says. “We’ve done houses all over the world, and it always comes down to, How do you want to live? We want to create environments that feel at ease in their communities and help people build that life that they would like to have.”
