Amber Valletta’s Climate Education Isn’t Slowing
- Oops!Something went wrong.Please try again later.
NEW YORK — Amber Valletta advocated for change long before sustainability became, well, fashionable.
In a closing conversation at the Fashion Institute of Technology’s 17th annual sustainability conference, Valletta sat fireside with “Fashionopolis” author and journalist Dana Thomas to discuss the importance and role of activism and communication related to advancing sustainability in fashion. Beforehand, Valletta spoke with WWD — on the mend from bronchitis though still polished in a crisp black blazer — on how she’s focused on furthering her sustainability activism through education.
More from WWD
Before the modeling world and Hollywood set eyes on Valletta, she had hers locked on her mother’s eco-activism. Today she’s investigating how that maternal influence and her rootedness to her family farm in Oklahoma subtly set her sustainability career in motion. Valletta proudly claims her part-Cherokee ancestry and her mom successfully protested for years against the building of a power plant alongside local Indigenous activists. On the reasons her mom was protesting, “It all made sense to me,” she recounted.
As sustainability ambassador to not only FIT but also brands like Karl Lagerfeld (where her newest sustainable denim collaboration drops in a few weeks), Valletta has taken the path of continued learning — but perhaps, like mom, not of least resistance. (In 2019, she was arrested alongside fellow eco-activist Jane Fonda at a Washington, D.C., climate protest.)
But squarely right now, Valletta is committed to furthering her sustainability education.
“I’m taking some online courses, meeting with new types of people, and really trying to understand different elements to the solutions to the climate crisis so that I can better facilitate problem-solving for brands and also to communicate better with the public.”
Over the pandemic she audited three courses at FIT. There were no group projects, though Valletta did help judge FIT’s biodesign competition. In the early ‘90s, she attended NYU, and the first class she took was “Politics of the Environment.” She said the class “ignited a fire in me,” admitting though, “I didn’t really start taking action until I had my son and moved to California because they were so ahead of the curve.”
Based in a recently drought-filled Los Angeles, and outspoken about the deepening climate disparities, if anything is clear, she’s not slowing down.
“The urgency of what needs to happen in order to keep us below 1.5-degrees Celsius has never been more pressing. Because of that I feel myself, personally, the urgency to focus as much as I can and my attention here to really educate myself so I can be more impactful, and probably, eventually phase out of this sort-of day-to-day modeling job,” she said. “Although I don’t know if it will ever fully leave me because of my desire to work with brands, and maybe they want to keep photographing me as I get older,” she added with a laugh and shrug of the shoulders.
“The bulk of my work is turning more and more into consulting….I don’t have a firm, officially, and I haven’t called myself a ‘consultant,’ yet,” she clarified, upon further questioning.
Luckily, “The only reality is one you create,” in her words, so photo shoots and consulting exist in harmony. “I believe that [climate doomsday] is a tactic that keeps us from fixing what we need to fix. I don’t know where that’s coming from — it could be ourselves. But I know we also have the power, truly, to change the future and dream the future that we want.”
Best of WWD
