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Jessica Alba

Jessica Alba article

I live in Vancouver. And while that bears absolutely no relevance to the piece at hand, it does come with an apt little side note. In Vancouver, there exists a certain pride in our being dubbed Hollywood North. The shooting of hit productions so commonplace on our own streets that long chains of bumper-to-bumper industry-related trucks and trailers are a regular fixture of our cityscape. But it’s not the catering vans, the hoards of gaffer-types, and the mass of electrical cords we have to tentatively step around while precariously balancing our soy lattes that cause the most excitement. It’s – we’ll admit it – those guess-who-I-just-saw! bump-ins. At the local Starbucks, jogging on the seawall, or browsing the shops of some quaint ‘hood, every once in a not-so-rare while, we get our dose of the coveted celeb sighting. (Oh, but we’re always polite about it. That just comes with being Canadian, of course. No one is dressed like a rubber tree hiding in front of our own versions of Beverly Hills’ The Ivy waiting to take a snap with the digi.)

While King-of-the-world director James Cameron shot his series Dark Angel, one such frequent sighting was of the relatively new-on-the-scene-but-clearly-going-places actress who played Max Guevara. Her name? Jessica Alba. And while she turned heads in Vancouver on and off from 2000 – 2002, it wasn’t long before this rising star was turning heads around the world. From leading roles in films like Honey, The Fantastic Four, Good Luck Chuck, The Eye, and most recently Mike Myers’ The Love Guru, to coveted top spots on those lists that tell a gal wow-you’re-officially-hot, including Maxim Magazine’s Hot 100 and FHM’s Sexiest Woman in the World. She’s graced the covers of GQ, InStyle, and even Heff’s long-time rag, Playboy – with clothes in the “on” mode. And while all this is impressive, perhaps what is most admirable is her central role as the face of the DeclareYourself.com campaign, intended to encourage young Americans to vote.

Suffice to say the woman’s professional life is robust. And yet, in June 2008, that all took a backseat with the arrival of her daughter, Honor Marie. While Honor may be Jessica’s first born, she joins two long-standing members of Jessica’s household, her canine-sisters Bowie and Sid – an American Bull Dog rescue and a Pug. (As a little bit of Jessica Trivia, her two girl dogs are named after male musicians, David Bowie and Sid Vicious.) A lover of all things dog, when it came time to buy her home, Jessica knew there would be certain challenges. “It needed to have a yard,” she tells me over the phone. “It’s so difficult to find a good yard in LA. We looked everywhere and we found a house, and everything was perfect – except it didn’t quite have the yard I wanted for the dogs.”

The solution? Enter Kari Whitman. Not only designer to the stars, but designer to the stars’ dogs. Oh, and on top of that, creator of GreenerPup.com, a line of totally adorable, eco-friendly doggy beds whose profits go to Ace of Hearts, the organization Kari founded which has rescued over 2,000 dogs from death row – including Jessica’s Bowie. “When I started working with Kari,” Jessica explains “I told her my number one priority in buying a home was making it dog-friendly. She had done a kitchen for my parents, and I just loved what she did.” And what she did, in the case of Jessica’s mom and dad’s place, included custom-made bunk beds in the kitchen for the family’s dogs, so that they could be fully integrated into the home. “I love Kari’s passion. She has really good taste. She totally gets it. She knows all about what’s safe for dogs, what makes a good environment for them.”

From creating a special doggy-room complete with a massive 6-foot-by-4-foot bed and indoor/outdoor access, to doting the house with her custom-made GreenerPup pieces, Kari oversaw every detail in the “dogification” of Jessica’s home. The biggest, yet most rewarding, challenge was replacing the vast Spanish tile with Forever Lawn, a dog-friendly, eco-friendly synthetic material made from recycled tires. “Now the dogs have the biggest playground and we’re super happy,” says Jessica.

Before we hang up, I am able to ask this busy lady what she has on the go professionally, and she admits that she’s enjoying being at home, “just kind of sitting back and being a mom.” So while LA’s got her for now, in Vancouver we’ll just have to settle for those occasional sightings.