Nia BowersThe British model has spent five years on campaigns for SKIMS, Fashion Nova, Boohoo and Pretty Little Thing. Now she is moving to the city where much of that work is commissioned.
Alessandra Tyrrell-Charles is relocating to Los Angeles with a client list that already runs through the city. Two of the labels she has modeled for, SKIMS and Fashion Nova, are headquartered here. A third, the Australian swimwear brand Bydee, does most of its business with American customers. For a model who built her career from Manchester, the move brings her closer to the people who have been booking her from abroad.
Tyrrell-Charles has worked professionally for five years and is signed with The Four Models Management in Manchester and, more recently, with Natural Models in Los Angeles. Her credits cover a wide stretch of the British and American online fashion market. Pretty Little Thing, Boohoo, ASOS, Shein, Fashion Nova, Ann Summers, Musera and Bydee are all on the list, along with social campaigns for SKIMS and NikeSKIMS. She sees the American market as the next stage of her career, and she has no doubt about where to base it.
“Los Angeles is the modeling hub of the world,” she says. “There’s just so much opportunity there.”
Los Angeles on the Call Sheet
SKIMS is the clearest example of how much of her work already leads back to California. The shapewear and loungewear label was co-founded in June 2019 by Kim Kardashian and Jens Grede and is headquartered in Los Angeles. In 2025, it moved into sportswear through NikeSKIMS, the joint line with Nike whose first collection went on sale on September 26, 2025. Tyrrell-Charles has appeared in social campaigns for both.
Fashion Nova is another Los Angeles company. Her Fashion Nova work was shot in London, which is ordinary in online fashion, where the shoot, the brand, and the customer can be in three different countries. It also means Tyrrell-Charles arrives with credits from LA companies before she has signed a lease here.
Trained Where British Online Fashion Grew Up
Her early career makes more sense with a map of the British industry beside it. Manchester is home to two of the companies most associated with online fast fashion in the UK. Boohoo was founded in 2006 and is run from Dale Street in the city center. Pretty Little Thing also has its headquarters in Manchester. Both are on Tyrrell-Charles’s list of credits.
ASOS, the UK online fashion store, and Ann Summers, the British lingerie and swimwear retailer whose first shop opened at Marble Arch in London in 1970, round out the British side of her book. Shein is there as well, alongside the smaller label Musera.
A model signed in Manchester has every reason to learn this side of the business first, because it is the industry on the doorstep. What that industry asks of a model is different from the catwalk. The work is commercial, it moves quickly, and it is judged on whether the clothes sell.
What Online Fashion Asks of a Model
The scale is easiest to see through Shein. In the draft prospectus for its planned initial public offering in Hong Kong, the company said it launched an average of 4,700 new designs per day in the first quarter of 2026. Each of those designs has to be shown to a customer before it can be sold, and in online retail that means photographs.
Brands working at that pace need models who can deliver a large number of usable images in a single day, change looks quickly, and keep a consistent standard from the first frame to the last. They also need people who can move between formats. A product page, a campaign image, and a social video for SKIMS or NikeSKIMS each ask for something different from the person in front of the camera.
Five years inside that system is a practical education. Tyrrell-Charles has worked for brands at the fast end of the market and for labels with a more specific identity, such as Bydee and Ann Summers, and her book covers swimwear, lingerie, sportswear and ready-to-wear. Commercial clients in Los Angeles hire across all of those categories, which makes the move a continuation of work she already does.
The job has also taught her how to take a no. “Modeling has taught me to be determined, to face rejection as a redirection, and that nothing is personal,” she says. “I have my own look and my own strengths, and brands see that.”
Bydee in Zanzibar, Bali and Italy
For Bydee, Tyrrell-Charles has shot campaigns in Zanzibar, Bali and Italy, and the photographs that accompany this story come from that work. Three locations for one label means repeat bookings, and in commercial modeling a client coming back is the plainest measure of whether the pictures sell.
Bydee is based in Australia, but the United States is its biggest market. In November 2024, the Australian trade publication Ragtrader reported that the US accounted for 60 percent of Bydee’s sales, with Australia making up almost 40 percent, and that the brand had sold nearly 50,000 bikinis in a single month that June.
An Australian swimwear brand with a majority American customer base, photographing a British model in Zanzibar, Bali and Italy, is a fair summary of how this part of the industry works. When American shoppers browse Bydee’s campaigns, hers is one of the faces they see.
Moving to the Market
Los Angeles is the natural base for a model working for that customer. SKIMS and Fashion Nova are run from here, NikeSKIMS is a partnership with a Los Angeles company, and Bydee’s largest market is the country she is moving to. For a model whose work already lands with US customers, living here shortens the distance between the bookings and the brands making them.
Her plans extend to the other coast as well. “In two years I want to be building my clients across LA and New York and carving out a name for myself,” she says. The brands she most wants to work with include Fenty Beauty, Victoria’s Secret, ThirdLove, Monday Swimwear and Rare Beauty, a list weighted toward swimwear, lingerie and beauty. “I’ll never take Victoria’s Secret off the table,” she adds. “Walking their show would be incredible.”
Tyrrell-Charles has representation in place before she arrives, with Natural Models in Los Angeles alongside The Four Models Management in Manchester. She brings five years of credits, a book that runs from swimwear to sportswear, and experience of working at the speed online fashion demands. After half a decade of shooting for American customers from overseas, she will now be working in the same city as two of the brands that hired her.