How to break into fashion journalism

What does it take to be a success in the fashion industry? This question never gets old. I notice more inquiry into fashion journalism. Modelling, it is said, appeals to travellers, adventurers, attention-seekers, or those recruited for their physicality.

Is photography interesting because you have a point of view and see things in a way others don’t, because Emmanuel Jambo’s lens makes life shimmer or because Mutua Matheka is kind of a big deal?

Is styling fascinating when someone finally sees their own beauty for the first time, possess a wonderfully weirdly creative eye and great spatial recognition?

Do you want to blog because Sharon Mundia, Nancie Mwai, Silvia Njoki, Joy Kendi et al are beautiful, celebrated and successful and you want one of those, or because there is something you want to say and are willing to put in the work? These reasons will matter on a bad day.

Fashion careers do not just happen to the creative, attractive or talented.  You have to put your nose to the grind. Writing is not simply about who wore what where when how and why. It needs a perspective that only you bring in, cultivate, stand for, hold opinions on and about, read up and study on, address and champion. In other words, it needs a voice.

I have written thousands - yes - thousands of articles from business, features, columns, health, fitness, people, even shaving off occasional political edges. People fascinate. I want to know what makes them tick, approaching interviews like a profiler. Inside the business of fashion, I border on obsessive.

GOOD READER

The most attractive stories remain the most frustrating ones, the ones I most want to understand because they are like a bug in my brain. My ‘whys’ are bottomless. Every fashion journalist has their schtick, and approach subjects differently.

One could offer a background rich in fashion history, another, an incisive student of fabrics and textiles and yet another, great at connecting technology with fashion or one be adept at managing relationships and communicating with fashion players.

Part of the reason fashion journalism can seem challenging and narrow is the limited local angle. That, and all the ways in which the industry is rather like a baby pool on a 30 degree Celsius afternoon. 

To be a good writer, it is said, one must be a good reader because it is in reading that writer first bumps into, and wakes up, their voice. I was always an avaricious reader. I didn’t meet a text I didn’t want to get to know. It was so bad my mother banned books during the KCSE exam season. It felt like being put through an overwhelming aggressive brand of detox.

Over time, I found, there was so much random stuff hanging out in my head, sipping tea. My conversations unfailingly launching with “I read in this article...:” My regurgitating encyclopaedia of a brain sounded impressive to peers.

Till I realised all I had were other people’s thoughts. I had to force myself to take a reading sabbatical and find my own point of view. Thinking is the crux of writing. Ideas, great to terrible, will come and go. You realise you understand less than you thought. Views will change over time.

Train yourself to let go. Somedays it will seem like the best article you will ever write is the one that never gets written. Some of your masterpieces will make you cringe in hindsight. Write anyway.

A lot has been said about the impatience of Millennials, the sense of urgency to arrive at success. You’re going to have to walk through more than a few fires, get lost, set up camp on the wrong side for a while, call for help, all to get to the other side. Being too eager for success and recognition makes content shallow, careless, and you, a dilettante.

Have more than a passing grasp of your subject. It takes living and life to have something worth listening to and reading. This is precisely why the legend of a writer driven by introspection, reflection and painful self awareness persists. It has some truth in it.

Be open to surprises in your career. I said yes to everything. I had no five year plan going in. Plans can make you rigid, resistant to disruption. In the volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous fashion industry, resistance blocks growth.

Picture your career as a tree. The roots your foundation, branches, possibilities erupting over time, proof a path is never one-dimensional. For some lucky few, branches join other trees, entangling your path with the rich undergrowth of the unexpected. There is no predicting who eats the fruit, the pattern of flowering or who, someday, lays under its shade.