As much as my all-girls’-school principal and Beyoncé music videos alike did their best to hammer home the degree to which girls can run the world if we hustle together, it is sometimes a little disillusioning to run into irrational and disproportionately hostile woman-to-woman conflict in everyday work life. Of course, intergender clashes occur just as frequently. And yet, the sting of a female colleague’s backstab or low blow is all the more demoralising. To that end, working on this portrait series of badass women I’ve been shooting between New York and Los Angeles over the past

couple of months has been so refreshing in its renewal of my faith in wildly successful, sharp and grounded individuals who have forged their own path.

In getting to know my subjects throughout each shooting process (which I also loved for its spontaneity, looking for light on fire escapes and in subway stations), the common denominator certainly appeared to be a safe haven of simple joys and luxuries (sunrises, Mexican food, family time) to offset the hard hustle of career women – and often, career mothers. Deep respect.

In such an aesthetically driven industry and digital landscape, women of substance cut through the noise with their intelligence, authenticity, and quiet overachievements. So, while the energies of New York and Los Angeles can be perceived as poles apart, the unifying quality of fierce independence of all of our subjects communicated everything Andrea stands for in A.L.C. Like me, all of our subjects’ affinities to the brand range in origins, but all roads lead back to comfort, confidence, and divergence from the ordinary.

Take a look and read up on the rest of the series here.