>> Amber Valletta Doesn't Want to Play the Girl Next Door Any More— Amber Valletta's fashion line with Monrow — of which she says "I didn’t just sign off on [the pieces], I went in and designed them" — comes out in November, but she's also got two movies in the can: Gamer, in which she plays a wife and mother trapped in a virtual-reality social-networking game opposite Gerard Butler, and The Spy Next Door, a family film with Jackie Chan out next year.  She tells V61 — for which Hedi Slimane photographed her — of her acting: "Now I know I don't want to be pigeonholed as the girl-next-door.  There's nothing wrong with the girl-next-door, but I'd like to be the psycho killer and the warrior princess and the sex bomb and do serious material like [David] Mamet or Shakespeare." [Telegraph UK, V]

>> Amber Valletta becomes the latest in a list of models-turned-designers — including Elle Macpherson, Kate Moss, Liya Kebede, Erin Wasson — by collaborating with LA-based contemporary sportswear brand Monrow.  

Amber Valletta for Monrow, which came about when she was introduced to Monrow's founding designers through mutual friends, covers thin layering tanks and tees, day dresses, a blazer, scarves, a cape, a smoking jacket, and a romper, which Valletta insisted upon because she "lives in them." The color palette runs through neutrals — navy, cream, black, gray, blush — with muted silver and gold, and the line, out in November, wholesales at $65 to $80, because, Amber says, “I’m not interested in making clothes that are not accessible.” 

The idea initially came as a surprise to Valletta: “I never thought about designing at all. If anything, maybe I would have done some kind of a children’s line because I love shopping with my son.”  But she's "already started working on next season."