Nina Dobrev is supporting her fiancé Shaun White as he makes his first foray into the world of high fashion!
Speaking exclusively with PEOPLE, the actress, 36, opened up about the moment her Olympian fiancé, 38, debuted his brand Whitespace’s first high-fashion collaboration with Moncler Grenoble at its fall/winter 2024 show in Switzerland on Feb. 3, 2024, for Fashion Week.
“It was really exciting. I’m really proud of him,” the Vampire Diaries alum says, speaking with PEOPLE for her partnership with SC Johnson for the Join Zuzu campaign to spread awareness about the dangers of plastic waste and importance of recycling.
“I mean, to have such a gorgeous collection and collaboration with such an established company like Moncler and have Whitespace work with them and see it on the runway with all these top models carrying the boards was very surreal for all of us and really exciting,” Dobrev adds.
White — who popped the question to Dobrev in New York City in late October — founded his snowboarding gear brand in 2022, and the company’s collab with Moncler marked one of its first ventures into the world of high fashion.
“Moncler is a very unique brand, and they always do some type of experience, so they didn’t disappoint,” the Olympic gold medalist told Esquire in February 2024 of the Switzerland fashion show just days prior. “Obviously the clothes were amazing, and it was especially amazing to see somebody take on this technical space and add the fashionable component to it. It’s about time.”
“I had been in talks with Moncler since the pandemic, and we finally found ourselves in a position where I was making really great snowboards, and they wanted to get into more technical outerwear with the Grenoble line. It’s a perfect symmetry because Whitespace definitely aligns with Moncler’s fashion-meets-function ideals,” he added to the outlet. “I feel like we could give them some credibility in the performance space, and they could give us some cool cred in the fashion world.”
White has continued to work with Moncler, and he and Dobrev attended the brand’s latest show in Switzerland on March 15.
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Elsewhere in her conversation with PEOPLE, Dobrev spoke about advocating for ocean cleanup through SC Johnson’s latest campaign — and detailed a vacation she took with White, her longtime BFF Julianne Hough and her The Out-Laws costar Adam Devine — for her 34th birthday two years ago that left her aghast.
“We went on a trip for my birthday to Indonesia, and I had already been to this specific place and I loved it so much that I wanted to bring my friends back there. And when I went back, I was truly stunned in a horrible way at how much the same beach that I’d visited previously — there was no beach left,” she recalls.
“As soon as I heard about this initiative that SC Johnson is doing, it made me really happy and inspired and I wanted to get involved right away,” she says of their advocacy campaign, which uses a video of Zuzu the hermit crab to spur action.
“I feel like that’s why so many people can’t get on board is because it’s sort of out of sight, out of mind. You don’t really see it, but you see it in this film and it really holds you accountable to do something, I think,” she adds.
Dobrev and White began dating in 2019 and made their romance official in April 2020 with a hilarious Instagram video. The Olympic snowboarder first revealed their engagement in an interview with Vogue, and the couple shared the happy news on Instagram soon after, with White posting a series of photos and the caption: “She said YES.”
Dobrev shared the same photos, captioning her post, “RIP boyfriend, hello fiancé.”
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