The Way Los Angeles Makes Itself Believable

I fall in love at a rate that should probably concern someone. A face in a photograph, a stranger across a street, a name I stumble on while scrolling at 1am—it doesn’t take much, and it doesn’t last long either, just this brief accumulated warmth that dissolves by morning. Not a problem. Might actually be the whole point.

Cynda McElvana is from Los Angeles, which is either the best or worst city to be impossibly good-looking in, depending on your perspective. Her Instagram sits somewhere between the expected bikini content and genuinely smart observations, with backstage glimpses that suggest the full person behind the aesthetic. The elegance reads as real rather than performed, which is rarer than it should be.

Photographer Darren Ankenman shot her for Purple Magazine—the French title that’s maintained its position as one of fashion photography’s more interesting venues, somewhere between editorial cool and genuine warmth. Ankenman has an eye for his subjects’ specificity rather than their generality, which means the images don’t flatten her into type. Los Angeles makes a certain kind of person possible. Cynda McElvana looks like she belongs there and also somehow survives it, which is the real trick.