Outside the studio, the LA sun has finally set. A text buzzes on Chanel’s phone—another brand, another brief, another PDF to ignore. She glances at it, then at Gal. Gal raises an eyebrow. Chanel shakes her head no .
They operate as a . Gal shoots, directs, and edits. Chanel moves, models, and co-directs the narrative. They split everything 50/50. When a luxury sneaker brand comes calling, they don’t ask for a brief—they pitch a world. chanel camryn, gal ritchie
Chanel nods. “Not to be difficult. But because we know what works for my body, for her light, for our audience. The brand is hiring us for our point of view. If they wanted stock photography, they could get it cheaper.” Outside the studio, the LA sun has finally set
“I’m not trying to capture Chanel dancing ,” Gal tells me, tucking her legs beneath her on a leather couch in their shared studio space in the Arts District. “I’m trying to capture the second before she decides to dance. The breath. The thought. That’s where the real image lives.” Gal raises an eyebrow
That first shoot produced exactly zero usable commercial images by traditional standards. But it produced trust . What makes the Chanel-Gal partnership notable isn’t just the aesthetic—it’s the economics of how they work. In an era where influencers are often directed by corporate social media managers and photographers are hired per campaign, Chanel and Gal have flipped the script.
Meanwhile, Gal Ritchie was quietly building a different kind of résumé. Raised between Tel Aviv and London, she fell into fashion photography almost accidentally while studying film. Her early editorial work for Vogue Czechoslovakia and Office Magazine caught attention not for celebrity access but for texture —a way of photographing clothes that made fabric feel like skin.