Hers is a sto­ry of great strug­gle, de­ter­mi­na­tion and suc­cess. An­drea Vance looks like a suc­cess­ful busi­ness­woman but her suc­cess is on­ly as a re­sult of be­ing dri­ven to tru­ly make a dif­fer­ence in the lives of women. She re­lat­ed her sto­ry to WE Mag, “I did not know how strong I am and how much I could en­dure. I had no idea that one pair of jeans could change my life in this way. I be­came a busi­ness­woman just af­ter my son was born be­cause I want­ed to make a dif­fer­ence in the lives of so many women. I want­ed women to feel a sense of con­fi­dence, so­phis­ti­ca­tion and unique­ness like none be­fore.”

Armed with that yearn­ing, An­drea, who comes from hum­ble be­gin­nings, start­ed off a busi­ness with a few hun­dred dol­lars. She had no idea what she was go­ing to do but she just knew she need­ed to build a busi­ness that would help women to feel con­fi­dent. On one of her trips abroad, the moth­er of one came across a pair of jeans and was in to­tal awe by the way she looked when she wore it. The jeans seemed to lift her butt and give her an ex­tra­or­di­nary shape. She felt like the sex­i­est woman alive. Want­i­ng every woman to feel that way, An­drea and her hus­band used what­ev­er lit­tle mon­ey they had and bought 12 pairs of jeans.

She got back to Trinidad, bought a Sty­ro­foam cool­er, pa­pered it with beau­ti­ful con­tact pa­per and put it in her car. Out of the trunk of her faith­ful Yaris, which she named Step One (rep­re­sent­ing the first step she took out of pover­ty), An­drea went from south to north, east, west and cen­tral. “Those first 12 jeans were the hard­est to sell” said An­drea. “Some­times cus­tomers even joked with me ask­ing if I was sell­ing drinks out of the cool­er.”

An­drea got many re­jec­tions and she was al­so deal­ing with post­par­tum de­pres­sion. Still, she did not let that stop her. “My hus­band knew how pas­sion­ate I was about this dream and every op­por­tu­ni­ty that came our way, we took it.” An­drea and her hus­band found the com­pa­nies abroad which would help them in their ven­ture. Af­ter the first 12 jeans were sold and word spread about the mirac­u­lous fit, the de­mand for it rose. In a short space of time, she sold so many jeans, that she was able to open a store – Step One Cloth­ing, so named for good rea­son.

The jeans fit her cus­tomers so well but af­ter hav­ing a plus-sized cus­tomer cry in her store, An­drea no­ticed that many Caribbean women had a lit­tle trou­ble in the tum­my area. She was de­ter­mined to fix that. Thus, in­spired by her great grand­moth­er years ago to do sewing, An­drea used that knowl­edge and be­gan de­sign­ing jeans suit­ed for every cus­tomer.

“For my first de­sign, I took the style, de­tails and com­fort in­to great fo­cus. Tak­ing in­to con­sid­er­a­tion the body types and lengths, I was al­ways spe­cif­ic with the qual­i­ty of the fab­ric and the de­tails even down to the but­tons and zip­pers. I was not cre­at­ing a mas­ter­piece on­ly for my­self but for lots of oth­er women who were seek­ing com­fort in them” she re­lat­ed.

It was done and An­drea cel­e­brat­ed her new col­lec­tion – Chris Jeans. “I have since de­signed sev­en col­lec­tions in­clud­ing com­pres­sion leg­gings” she re­lat­ed. Her first fash­ion show was tru­ly a suc­cess in col­lab­o­ra­tion with her dis­tri­b­u­tion part­ner MO­DA 21, who played a sig­nif­i­cant role in in­tro­duc­ing the jeans to the na­tion­al, re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al mar­kets. The busi­ness­woman, this year held her third fash­ion show – The Dream Col­lec­tion.

An­drea says that her jour­ney is far from fin­ished. “There were days when the chal­lenges were so re­al,” she said. Asked about her great­est chal­lenge, she stat­ed, “Post­par­tum de­pres­sion is no joke. I un­der­stand women who go through this hor­rif­ic event af­ter giv­ing birth. It is a bat­tle be­tween you and your­self. The mind is such a strong el­e­ment, but I have learnt that with prayer any­thing is achiev­able. It was the most I have ever prayed in my life. I begged God dai­ly to pre­serve my san­i­ty. It was a re­al chal­lenge but I got through it by his grace. It was suf­fi­cient for me.”

As for why peo­ple keep re­turn­ing to An­drea, she said, “Our style and ap­proach is unique and dif­fer­ent. The fact is that all women, in­clud­ing my­self, strug­gle with some kind of in­se­cu­ri­ty about them­selves. What I of­fer pro­vides a dif­fer­ence that cre­ates con­fi­dence and that look and feel-good ex­pe­ri­ence which one would nev­er ac­quire from reg­u­lar cloth­ing. Why be reg­u­lar when you can be ex­tra­or­di­nary? An orig­i­nal copy of you is al­ways bet­ter than an im­i­ta­tion of some­one. If I can, then you can. Every­one has the po­ten­tial to do some­thing great in this life. #AL­WAYSO­RIG­I­NAL­N­EV­ER­A­COPY.”