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Is fashion getting worse? Who is Rei Kawakubo? What is fashion week?
Fashion journalist Odunayo (Ayo) Ojo has amassed over 90,000 subscribers and 3 million views on his YouTube channel, Fashion Roadman, by answering these questions and many others, explaining the ins and outs of the industry to newcomers and offering analysis to insiders. Last year, he trialled a print magazine, the Fashion Archive, printing 350 copies at £50 a piece. They sold out the first day, Ojo says, taking him by surprise.
Ojo, 24, is a fascinating fashion-specific example of what happens when you combine core journalistic values — enthusiasm, research, rigour, and a yen for storytelling — with a talent for Gen Z audience engagement and an independent sensibility. Still a student, Ojo will commence his third year of fashion journalism study at Central Saint Martins next month. But, he’s already begun carving a niche in fashion media. “There are ways to create your own audience and build your own success,” he says. “And I think even the idea of what fashion journalism is, is changing.”
The walls have come down around fashion criticism. Gen Z fashion enthusiasts are using social media platforms like YouTube and TikTok to weigh in on news, collections, histories and trends, speaking to the eager ears of their peers who may otherwise be intimidated by the industry’s more traditional media landscape. It’s made people like Ojo sudden authorities on the next generation of fashion discourse, all from his bedroom, where he films his videos. The rise of criticism on social media, where everyone’s an expert, is a double-edged sword, but Ojo’s approach has garnered praise from the subjects he discusses.
One confirmed Ojo fan is Samuel Ross, the founder and designer of A-Cold-Wall. In 2019, Ojo posted an analysis of A-Cold-Wall’s Spring/Summer 2020 collection. Not long after Ojo happened to spot Ross in Selfridges, where the two recognised one another. Similarly when he approached designer Thebe Magugu by email for a CSM project, the LVMH prize winner responded to Ojo saying he too had been watching Roadman content.
Over an email, Ross says of Ojo: “His voice is essential, and critical. It cuts through the noise, bias and fluff, offering a parity and critique — two missing, or rarely found values across Gen Z and millennial design culture. Ayo is objective, not subjective in his thoughts and expertise.”
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