Model Ama Elsesser likens their troop of siblings to “a tribe—a crazy tribe. We ride for each other.” Their “centerpoint,” the model says, is their mother, Anedra: “She is our fearless leader and she guides us with love.”

They may be L.A. born and raised, but the Elsessers have established a front of their own on the East Coast. “I just moved to Brooklyn, and my brother, Sage, lives, like, two blocks away from me,” Paloma says. Ama and Kanyessa McMahon, their eldest sister (who shares a Lower East Side loft with her husband and son), aren’t far away, either. 

“Having a family unit in New York has laid the groundwork for me to feel safe and protected and to flourish here,” Paloma continues.

“My mother loves a lot of middle names,” McMahon says, “and I followed her lead, so Daschel’s full name is Daschel Tennessee Sharkey McMahon. Tennessee is to represent both my Grandma Audrey and my “Papa” Madison, as they were both born there. While they met and spent their 57 years together in Los Angeles, I love that, in a way, they were fated in their foundation…I wanted my son to know all things good in me, and thus him, flow from them.”

Visiting Los Angeles for work last September, Paloma saw Anedra and Audrey for the first time in six months. Having grown up with her grandparents as downstairs neighbors, she’d felt their absence acutely. “That was the longest that I hadn’t hugged my grandma in my entire life,” she says.

“To be, all of us, together with our mom and grandma and Dasch,” McMahon says, “it was as it always is: chaotically comfortable. It felt like home, because wherever those six are, I am home.”