For the name Lion Babe, we are a little avant-garde, a little left. And with bands like Blondie, Pink Floyd, or Jamiroquai, you don't know they're bands, you just kind of hear the name and you're like 'What is it?' so that was the kind of thing we wanted to do.

I prefer to do things by myself, but I always bring in people who inspire me.

Basically, my senior year of high school, I was going to look at prospective colleges and I went to visit Northeastern University because one of my friends was going.

We had spent a lot of time in London [with Lucas Goodman], which has been amazing, but also it was kind of a homecoming and we felt so surrounded by a specific community of people who are just so New York, so unapologetically themselves and so creative.

The women in my family are just strong women who do their own thing, so I knew I needed to have individuals like that.

South Africa was something that just kind of hit me.

[New York] gives you room to be weird; you can be yourself and you can wear whatever you want. No one is really going to judge you because everyone is doing their own thing.