On a recent afternoon, the oldest home in the Hancock Park neighborhood of Los Angeles presents a storybook version of chaos. Two small pigs roam the lawn, prompting constant cries of distress ("Hazel, no!"), tailed by a meek but enormous dog. Dozens of mostly barefoot people rush in and out of the farmhouse-like kitchen—everything the chicest bit worn—helping with dinner or grabbing snacks. Outside, across from a meditating Buddha by a rectangular pool—a small oasis of calm—is a tree with brightly colored bras dangling from the branches.
The extreme level of activity is at least partly due to a 10-person dinner party Phoebe Dahl, 26, is hosting in just a few hours. The granddaughter of one of the most wildly imaginative writers of the twentieth century, Roald Dahl, who wrote Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and his first wife, Patricia Neal, a porcelain-skinned, Oscar-winning film star, Phoebe is the founder of the sustainable and charitable clothing line Faircloth Supply, which puts out Japanese-inspired linen basics that are at once tomboyish and feminine—gingham jumpers, draped dresses in muted colors, and loosely tailored drop-crotch trousers. She lives nearby in a Silver Lake bungalow with her fiancée, Ruby Rose, 29, the tatted-up Australian breakout star of the latest season of Orange Is the New Black, but frequently still organizes get-togethers at the home where she spent much of her childhood and where her mother, Lucy, still lives.
It's easy to see why. The house is befitting of someone with the last name Dahl: Turreted and with a shingled roof, it has a rococo mural adorning the ceiling of one room and an entire wall featuring framed prints of spiders in another. Also, according to Phoebe, it's haunted. (In spite of how substantial it looks, the house was actually built nearby and moved to its current site in 1910, pulled over by horse and buggy.) Lucy bought the place in 1998, and ever since it has been home to her, her second husband, and a rotating cast of children, stepchildren (they have seven between them), and pets, which have included not just pigs but frogs, snakes, lizards, and a parrot.
Phoebe and Rose actually met there, at a barbecue Phoebe arranged for friends a year and a half ago. Rose, who'd recently moved to the States to try acting after becoming a well-known DJ and model in her homeland, was invited by a mutual friend, but almost didn't show. Her first stop in America had been rehab, and being newly sober, she thought about skipping the event. Then she heard there would be a pig. "So I came and met Hazel, and I fell in love," Rose says. "And then I met Phoebe." She laughs.
Phoebe's winningly casual approach to entertaining was immediately apparent. "She was in sweatpants and had no makeup on," says Rose. "But we fell in love at first sight." Three months and numerous tabloid appearances later, Rose, who has the bone structure of Angelina Jolie and the star power of the Milky Way, proposed. Phoebe accepted, but they didn't have much time to celebrate. A few hours later the designer headed to Nepal, where Faircloth's charitable efforts are focused—for each item sold, a girl there receives two school uniforms, school supplies, and a one-year scholarship.
"Do-gooderism," as Phoebe refers to it, clearly runs in the family. Her aunt, Ophelia Dahl, is cofounder of Partners in Health, an organization that helps provide health care for the poor around the world (it was the focus of Tracy Kidder's 2003 book, Mountains Beyond Mountains). And the same day as Phoebe's dinner party, her mother had organized an event for Cartwheelers, a group that aims to help women have more fun; Lucy and two other women were inspired to start it by a friend who, while dying of cancer, said she regretted not having laughed more (the dangling bras were one of the activities; attendees were invited to ditch theirs for anywhere from four seconds to forever, with many clearly choosing the latter). Even before she officially launched Faircloth, Phoebe, who graduated from the Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising in San Francisco and then spent a year working for the Amsterdam-based line Jupe by Jackie, knew she wanted her company to have a charitable component. To date, the line has funded the education of 2,000 Nepali girls. It's also environmentally conscious. Last March, Faircloth launched its first collaboration, a capsule collection sold at Urban Outfitters as part of the Urban Renewal program, which utilizes only dead-stock fabrics.
As the sky darkens, Phoebe and Rose's friends begin to show up. They include Lizzie Dulien, a jewelry designer; Ruby Corley, a model (and onetime favorite subject of It Kid photographer the Cobrasnake); Nick Hinman, a model/skateboarder turned screenwriter/actor; and Kate Moennig, the actress known for playing Shane on The L Word and Lena on Ray Donovan. Meanwhile, food is provided by Knuckle & Claw, a Silver Lake restaurant with a menu focused on lobster (flown in from the East Coast), opened last year by Phoebe's younger sister Chloe and her fiancée, Nikki Booth. The two of them bustle around in the kitchen, preparing grilled corn and a watermelon, olive, feta, and red onion salad, and checking on the main course: lobster potpies irreverently formed in the shape of the crustacean. (A love of culinary arts seems to be another family trait—Phoebe's cousin is model turned cookbook author Sophie Dahl.)
Out in the front yard, candle lanterns and flowers hang from the branches of an enormous tree, along with two long swings. Below all of this is a table surrounded by mismatched chairs and decorated with lush bouquets of roses arranged by local florist the Velvet Garden; the scene is completed, naturally, by a life-size wooden alligator peeking out from behind the tree's trunk.
Dinner conversation moves seamlessly from Rose's thoughts on whether Orange Is the New Black will drastically change her life (she doesn't think so) to why Corley doesn't plan to return to director Peter Berg's boxing gym of choice to Rose and Phoebe's complementary star signs. Meanwhile, inside the kitchen, Lucy chats with a few remaining friends while the pigs and dog root around for leftover crumbs, the walls above them decorated with various depictions of pets come and gone. Over the door that leads to the backyard, though, there is one slightly different item hanging in an unobtrusive frame: Willy Wonka's golden ticket.
This article originally appeared in the October 2015 issue of ELLE.
