Rachel Ojuromi took Lagos thrift-shop looks to Chanel

Rachel Ojuromi, a 22-year-old Nigerian filmmaker, walked for Chanel’s spring/summer 2027 show at the Grand Palais in Paris last month.

Her route there ran through Lagos markets, roadside stalls and crowded streets. Since March this year, Ojuromi and Debby Fasingha, her childhood friend, neighbour and stylist, have published one fashion video each day for six months. They remake runway looks with secondhand clothes and scraps, mostly from open-air hubs such as Yaba market.

No view counts accompany the account, so the size of the resulting online audience remains unquantified.

In the films, shot in Gbagada, Yaba and other parts of Lagos without stopping traffic, Lagos becomes the runway. Pedestrians, traders and drivers react with amused stares, smiles and cheers.

One video follows Ojuromi through traffic with a tray of bananas balanced on her head. Another shows her drinking tea opposite a teenage boy outside a roadside shop, with a kettle on the table.

The tea scene came from a Japanese advertising campaign. Ojuromi had conceived it but needed someone to play the tea drinker. When a passerby learned that the film needed an extra, she fetched her son.

That contingency captures what Ojuromi calls the joy of shooting fashion photos in Lagos. “There is something meaningful about knowing that a particular image or video exists because of a moment that happened at a specific time and place,” she says. “Even if somebody tries to recreate it, it will never be the same.”

Her commitment to creative work began before Give Rachel a Shot became her digital identity. Her mother sold clothes in local markets. Ojuromi initially wanted to become a neurosurgeon, inspired by Gifted Hands, Ben Carson’s autobiography. Carson, an African-American doctor from Detroit, was the example behind her wish to break down barriers.

Complications with Ojuromi’s college application prompted a year away from study. She explored filmmaking and concluded that surgery was not for her. “I wanted to contribute something meaningful and push boundaries,” she says. “I discovered that I could pursue that ambition through creativity rather than medicine.”

Her first Lagos videos tested creative direction and street photography. With Fasingha, she reinterpreted global collections using thrifted garments and other wardrobe finds before taking the results outdoors. Cost shaped the work as much as the city did.

“One of my mantras is to live within the reality of your situation,” Ojuromi says. “I am not going to spend money on something I cannot afford simply because I want to create a particular look.”

The project also asks what a borrowed runway image communicates. “We are more interested in the conversations happening around those clothes,” she says. “We ask ourselves what the designer is trying to communicate through the collection. What is the central message? What is the cultural reference?”

Chanel provided the clearest test of that method. Ojuromi and Fasingha made looks inspired by the house’s Métiers d’Art 2026 collection. Chanel casting director Anita Bitton gave them the go-ahead to publish their versions. Their clip then drew attention from several influential fashion figures, including Chanel creative director Matthieu Blazy.

Later discussions led Ojuromi from Lagos to Paris, where she walked in the spring/summer 2027 show. The sequence records a move from borrowing the visual language of global collections to appearing before the fashion house whose collection she had reworked.

What does the Chanel appearance change for Ojuromi?

It shows that a project built from Lagos markets and thrift-shop constraints can reach a fashion house’s attention. It does not establish a commercial partnership. Bitton’s approval covered publication of the reworked looks; no Chanel commission, fee or continuing role is reported.

For Ojuromi, the immediate change is scale. The six-month daily schedule supplied the public work behind the attention from Bitton, Blazy and others. The Paris appearance extends the series’ visibility, but it does not by itself widen access for the young African creatives whom Ojuromi wants to represent.

Her ambitions already extended beyond modelling. She is a filmmaker, creative director, and founder and editor of Process Africa, which promotes young African creatives. She launched the platform in 2023 after an event organised by her young artist friend Temidayo Aríṣe.

Process Africa seeks to confront barriers facing young artists, designers, photographers and other creatives across Africa, especially limited access to opportunities needed to establish themselves. At the founding event, Ojuromi saw a reporting gap. “I remember looking around [at the event] and thinking that somebody needed to tell the stories of these people,” she says.

She also wants the platform’s work judged as culture, not contained by geography. “I don’t want people to constantly feel the need to introduce their work as African fashion or African art, as though it belongs to a separate category,” she says. “It is fashion. It is art. It is music. It is creativity.”

No funding figure, institutional commitment or programme for emerging creators is reported. The account therefore documents access to attention, not a structural change in the market. It also leaves open whether daily production is sustainable beyond its six-month run.

Her achievement is concrete but bounded: a daily Lagos experiment reached the Grand Palais; no evidence yet shows that Chanel or Process Africa has widened access for the young creators Ojuromi wants to support.