Risk-taking, decoding fashion, and honest interviews, with Recho Omondi

0:00Net-a-Porter presents The Incredible Women Podcast, Series 10, Supernovas. Welcome to the 10th series of The Incredible Women Podcast, in which we sit down with women who shine bright and draw greatness into their orbits. All at the top of their game, some of these incredible women you'll already be familiar with, and others we're excited to introduce you to. I'm Alice Casely-Hayford, Content Director at Net-a-Porter, and I'm thrilled to be joined for this episode of our Supernova series by fashion podcast creator and host, Rachel Amondi.

0:36Recho Omondi:But I really wanted to just get started and I'm a big failer. I like to just fail and just try things on my own. So I got started failing. Born in Oklahoma, Amondi had a nomadic upbringing, moving around the US with her family before eventually settling in New York City, where she's lived since graduating from Savannah College of Art and Design in Atlanta. Amondi has always had a love for fashion and craved to understand it fully. She began her career working in retail at Barney's before moving into design and pattern making for brands including Calvin Klein. In 2013, inspired by her Kenyan heritage and life in New York, she founded her own fashion brand, Amondi, which she described as a personal diary told through clothes.

1:23After building her label, she had a desire to branch out again and create a forum that opened up the otherwise impenetrable and elitist fashion industry. The Cutting Room Floor launched in 2018 with the tagline, Fashion's Only Fashion Show. The podcast became a platform for honest conversation, featuring expert voices from across the industry, from stylists and image makers to CMOs. Last year, the business of fashion recognized Amandi's unique contribution to fashion media, naming her in their definitive list, the BOF 500, of those shaping the industry and its future. Let's meet Rachel. Well, hello, Rachel.

2:05Welcome. It is such a pleasure to have you joining us today on the Incredible Women podcast. How are you doing?

2:11Recho Omondi:I'm doing great. Thank you for having me. Not at all. And I have to say, I've interviewed lots of amazing women, but I'm always particularly nervous when I interview an incredible podcaster. But I think before we dive into the cutting room floor, I want to take it back to the very beginning and really understand where your love of fashion began. You've spoken about it stemming from a love of glossy magazines and the way you devoured those in your youth. But did you grow up in a particularly creative or fashion centric household? Yes and no. I was raised by a single father in the Midwest and I had older sisters and, you know, they were really influential in all the ways that a baby sister soaks things up.

2:58Recho Omondi:But, you know, they had a lot of magazines and I think that's really what brought it into the house probably early. I don't know that an eight year old or, you know, would have picked up a magazine on their own, but it was always around the house. You know, my father was in medicine, but he did really emphasize the idea of us being cultured. So music was very important to him. We all played instruments. You know, we all saw musicals. We weren't really allowed to watch television except for on the weekends. and so he wanted us to be well-read and so we always had a ton of books in the house. I danced growing up, did ballet, you know, contemporary.

3:39Recho Omondi:We always, you know, traveled which is kind of natural because my parents are immigrants so, you know, that was just a normal part of life, kind of going back through Europe on the way back to East Africa. So I think in that regard, our extracurriculars, our, you know, the world outside of academics was really focused on being cultured. And so that was probably deeply influential, I think. Well, it sounds like a wonderful space that fostered creativity, but I believe you then went to study medicine or you started off with that and then you pivoted. What brought the change around and when did that happen?

4:17Recho Omondi:Well, I think it's natural to be influenced by your parents and what they do. So again, because my dad was a single parent, we did spend a lot of time at hospitals. They were within walking distance. We would go to the cafeteria. We didn't have a babysitter and kind of hang out there. We'd go to the vending machine. So I spent a lot of times in hospitals. And I think that was kind of like a safe place because I knew that's where dad was. We knew that's where daddy was if we needed him. I just was like, oh, I'll just be pre-med. I didn't really think about it. But about halfway through my college experience, so not even, I would say the beginning of freshman year, I was kind of starting to figure out this probably wasn't the best place for me, But I didn't necessarily know what was next.

4:58Recho Omondi:It wasn't until maybe another year. So my sophomore year that I realized that I could study fashion for my father. It was less about what I was going to study and more about, can you make a career out of this thing? You know, and if you think you can, then go for it. But he just didn't want us not being realistic and kind of flailing in the wind. Absolutely. Well, I understand that wholeheartedly. My father was West African. He worked in fashion, actually. And if there was one thing he begged me, he was like, please don't work in fashion. I want you to have a stable and fulfilling career and fashioning it, especially as a black woman.

5:33But lo and behold, here I am and I ended up in the industry and I love it. But I'm very grateful for understanding from him an amazing work ethic, which is something that evidently you have. Back to the start of your journey, I would love to hear more about falling in love with fashion during your education and then that evolving into launching your own brand.

5:55Recho Omondi:Yeah, I think falling in love with fashion, you know, people ask that a lot. And I really say it was more about falling in love with make believe, because I think that's what fashion is. I think it was the idea of playing characters that was really interesting to me. I grew up dancing. So we had recitals once a year. I did competitive dance for a while. So that's very costume heavy. And there's a lot of fittings that you're in. And even, you know, any ballerina will tell you, even just sewing the elastics onto your shoes, the concept of needle, thread, fittings, costumes, you're very affiliated with.

6:25Recho Omondi:You're very comfortable with changing backstage, changing in front of others. Same thing with musical theater. I wasn't that heavy into musical theater in terms of like acting, but I loved going to see musicals. And that was a lot of like the safest music my dad could give us as a parent. So we always were like gifted musicals, like full, you know, double cassette tapes of musicals. And a lot of my favorite musicals, I used to listen to the entire track list through and through before I ever saw the stage show. So by the time I made it to the stage show, I knew every song, every word. And it was really beautiful to see it come to life because in my mind, I had already imagined what it was going to be like.

7:07Recho Omondi:So when people ask about fashion, it's so funny because to me, I feel like it's a pipeline of really falling in love with make-believe and getting dressed and becoming this person once you get dressed because there is some aspect of like, you know, becoming a character when you get dressed and the references and the mood boards and it's giving this, it feels like this and the references. I think that part is what really attracted me to it. And then, you know, as far as it being an industry is something that I just learned later, but I think I fell in love with like make-believe first. And so then how did that love of make-believe and what was the stories that you wanted to make believe when you launched your label in 2013?

7:47Recho Omondi:Well, it's funny when I launched my label, I, it feels like commonplace today, but at the time I had this vision of a lot of Eastern and global South references. You know, I think the industry had lost a lot of its color. And so that was a huge inspiration to me was kind of bringing in references from like the lifestyles that I new. I mean, I feel like I lived a very dual life because on the one hand, I'm from the Midwest. I grew up in kind of small towns all over middle America and the Midwest. And then at the same time, I was traveling globally at a very young age with my family to Paris or Stockholm or Brussels and then into Nairobi and into Kenya.

8:28Recho Omondi:So I had this wild duality to my life because I was around kids who never left their town. They'd never even left the tri-state area. And then we for the summers would go halfway around the world. So my early inspirations for the brand was about balancing both of those references and didn't really feel like people saw the beauty of people who are in the global South, whether that was African Arab nations, et cetera. And then also this kind of Midwestern flatlands, flat plains, small town mindset. But, you know, both of them, both of those worlds kind of infused who I am now. It sounds like you drew from so many rich, disparate parts of the world in your own upbringing.

9:09It sounds incredible. So then you continued to develop your brand for a few years, but then at a point you decided to launch the incredible podcast that is The Cutting Room Floor. What was the need for this new creative outlet?

9:24Recho Omondi:Well, I kind of did the thing that everyone says not to do, which is don't launch a brand right out of school. And I did it anyway because I had so much to get out of my system. And, you know, I did work for other people, but I really wanted to just get started. And I'm a big failure. I like to just fail and just try things on my own. So I got started failing. And I think what I realized is that it was so hard to build a brand or at least to the scale that I had aspired to. And I think the podcast really was grown out of frustration because I felt like even though I had all of these relationships in the business and colleagues, none of them really understood the plight of a designer.

9:59Recho Omondi:You know, my audience knows this because I liken the industry a lot to the analogy of a restaurant, right? And so like front of house versus back of house and everybody I knew was front of house. And I felt like they really had no idea what any of the cooks did in the kitchen, which is how I felt about designers. I'm like, everybody's at this restaurant for what we can provide them. And yet nobody understands what it is that they do or what we do. So I was really frustrated and I really started it as a way of wanting to have conversations that were across like every vertical of the business, multiple disciplines that were really honest and informative as well.

10:36Recho Omondi:And that really highlighted how huge the industry is and how many people are here because I love fashion. I still do, but then I really started to love the industry and the business, the global business that it is. And it's such an interesting business as well because, you know, none of this stuff is even necessary, really. And so there's so much sociology and psychology and nuance and anthropology that's involved into like why certain things work. So it was really just I needed an outlet to just get ideas out, thoughts out, questions out and help people understand more. Well, gosh, there's so much from what you just said that I want to dissect.

11:16But I think from the beginning of your answer where you said about launching your brand just out of school and having a sort of openness to fail. I'd love to hear more about that. What makes you a risk taker or rather not be scared of failing?

11:34Recho Omondi:I don't know. I guess I've always been that way. I mean, I'm a very independent person. I've been independent since I was really little. I think because I'm the youngest of three girls and they're five and six years older than me. And so we didn't really have a lot of the same stages in life. You know, I very much kind of lived not like an only child, but in a way kind of because there wasn't anybody that was like sharing in my experience. We never went to the same schools. We didn't have the same kind of issues at the same time. So I felt like I grew up kind of independently. And I think, you know, I had a single parent who was working a lot.

12:06Recho Omondi:So, you know, I was a latchkey kid. If you want something, you figure it out yourself. So, I mean, all of that, I'm sure, informs it. We moved around a lot growing up. And so I was thrown into a new school almost every year, every other year. So that creates a lot of social agility. Like you have to learn how to adapt very quickly and pay attention to kids and students and what do they like or not like. Or, you know, you really kind of I became I never had a problem making friends. I was always really social. I think that infused a lot of independence, I think, because we traveled globally so much.

12:38Recho Omondi:Like I said, that created a worldview that I didn't really see in my peers in these small towns that I was in. And so I felt very comfortable traveling very early. And I knew the idea of getting a passport and going through customs and like waiting, you know, all these things that I'd kind of been groomed to do. I was one of the few people who kind of like went away for school, you know, after I left my hometown and went to college and moved to New York. So I don't know. There's a lot of things that just kind of I felt independent and I felt very capable. I think that's probably the better word.

13:08I felt really capable and smart, street smart.

13:12Recho Omondi:Like I knew that I would be okay and I was very deeply observant. I could pay attention to like the world around me and then navigate it that way. So I always had this kind of self-sovereignty and belief in myself that like I might get it wrong, but if I can study it and figure it out, that I will figure it out. Absolutely. Well, as you said, those observational skills and that ability to talk to anyone has set you up perfectly to host such a hugely successful podcast. So you launched it whilst you were still concurrently doing your brand and then you decided to dissolve your brand and focus on the podcast.

13:50Were you daunted by that or did you have the conviction to know this is it? This is going to be my career now?

13:57Recho Omondi:At a point, I eventually got to the place where this is going to be my career now. But that wasn't the plan originally. I had started the podcast before COVID, but it was like a side thing. I was still running my brand and doing other work. And so COVID obviously was like a temperature check for a lot of people and kind of made everybody reflect. And again, I was expecting to kind of go back to New York, get a job. I wasn't expecting to podcast for a living, probably for fun. And it had already generated money. Like I knew it had earning potential, but I wasn't expecting to do it full time. But eventually I did.

14:31Recho Omondi:I mean, we had a couple of viral episodes. It was kind of progressing. And so it didn't feel like this big jump. It just really felt like a very gentle, honest answer. Like, okay, you're going to close this chapter and you're going to move on to this next chapter. And it feels very seamless and it makes sense. I was tired of the fashion brand. It was a huge lift. It's capital intensive and asset heavy and it's a lot of inventory. And it was a big daunting responsibility. So I felt very good to clean up house and kind of sell off a lot of things and pair everything down and just have some cameras and talk.

15:07Recho Omondi:So I wish I could say that it was like this big, scary jump, but it wasn't. It felt like this very quiet whisper in my ear of like, OK, you're going to put that down and you're going to pick this up. And it just felt really natural and seamless. And in terms of scaling and marketing the podcast, who helped them form that strategy or was it just innate and organic? and obviously you just touched then on some of those viral episodes which I'm sure everyone has seen Steve Madden the law roach count most of amazing amazing episodes was that really intentional to create this virality or was that just great it's happened and we'll go with it we never intend to create virality it just happens and I think that's been an interesting thing that it's happened a few times now that people are starting to realize like okay maybe it's her.

15:52Recho Omondi:Maybe there's something there. But we never really I never approach any interview trying to like have a clickbait viral moment. I mean, there are times where somebody is saying something and I'm like, that's going to that's going to be something. But, you know, I've never coerced them into saying it. I don't think I think it's more that I'm trying to get to some kind of real answer or concrete truth. You know, there's a certain kind of agreement that both me and my guests have to have an unspoken agreement in order for the episode to move and communicate the way that I think both parties want it to.

16:30Recho Omondi:And if I find that somebody is kind of dodging that, then I'll usually kind of capture that. I'll notice it. So it doesn't do either me or them, you know it doesn't doesn't do us any favors to kind of avoid elephants in the room in that kind of thing so I try to eliminate those types of things as quickly as possible but no we never really planned for anything to be super viral and there was never a distinct marketing strategy I mean I think the probably biggest strategy if we're calling it that was just adopting video because for those first few years it was audio only and obviously that's changed things enormously in terms of like discoverability of the show.

17:09And in terms of the podcast landscape, it's pretty sort of saturated and there's a lot more now than when you started out. How have you seen as sort of an OG the landscape, the climate, the industry evolve? Wow.

17:24Recho Omondi:I mean, listen, there's so many podcasts now. And on the one hand, I do think it's cool. I think what podcasting did was similar to blogs. It was like this low barrier to entry to kind of compete with radio. And the concept in and of itself, I think, is really beautiful and genius. And it's really democratic and makes it so that anybody can participate. But it's a really hard business. That's the other thing about podcasting is I think a lot lot of people get into it because they think it's really simple and it's really easy. And as you're learning and, you know, as I've been learning that it's a production, it's a full on regular production.

17:59Recho Omondi:So unless you're kind of prepared to do that, I think a lot of people start them, but not a lot of people continue them. Similar to, you know, like blogs, how many people did we know started them? And then they're like, oh, I don't want to do this anymore. You know, so maybe it's a long game and it's also a content game if the content is valuable, but obviously the landscape has changed so much. It's very saturated now, but I think if you focus and you know why you're doing something, there's like this kind of old adage that they would say to NASCAR drivers, like focus on the road, not the wall.

18:30Recho Omondi:Otherwise you'll crash. I think it's, that's kind of my mentality, which is a little bit of tunnel vision. Like I'm not really paying attention to that many other podcasts other than like what we're doing with my team in our office every day. Are there any dream guests that you're still hoping to get on the podcast? Yeah, so many. I have so many dream guests. However, the conundrum I'm in is that most of my dream guests are really press adverse. You know, they're people that historically do not have a record of talking to the media very much, as amazing as they are and how great their work is.

19:02Recho Omondi:And I totally get it because I don't talk to the press that much. You know, I get it. But yeah, a lot of my dream guests are not people who really love talking to media. That's part of the allure because there's the mystique we don't get to see behind the curtain much. And but also them being good at their job. Right. That's the painful part. And like kind of the cruel irony is like they're so good at what they're doing through the businesses that they built or their design acumen. And then, yeah, they don't want to talk to anybody. So it's painful when you're a fan. But but I also get it. You said earlier about not necessarily paying so much attention to lots of other podcasts.

19:37but do you pay a lot of attention to your community and the audience and how they're responding to things or do you just try to shut out the noise and do what you think is instinctively

19:47Recho Omondi:right it's both i'll definitely hear them out and consider that but i'm not like a slave to my audience like i there it's not like the customer's always right but they are right a lot of times and they have opinions and i think it's shocking a lot of times when people don't listen to what their audience is telling them for example they had told me for years that they wanted me to transform the show to video. And I was scared and it was a big daunting thing. I didn't come from media or production. And so it took a while to get there, but they had made it very clear that they wanted video. And now they have the option of listening to audio or video.

20:18Recho Omondi:So yeah, you definitely take into consideration what they say, but I also should go back and say, I don't not pay attention to anything. I mean, part of what I do is being like culturally in tune and kind of seeing how things are moving. So, I mean, I am in a silo in a lot of ways, but I do have like maybe one ear to the street. I think I know like maybe what shows exist. I don't know if I've listened to them. You know, it's more like that kind of thing. Obviously, there's a lot of fashion podcasts that have come out since we started, but I kind of have an idea of what's around. I think what's really interesting about your podcast, as you said, podcasts by sort of definition, they're reasonably democratic.

20:57The fashion industry is everything but that and has historically been super elitist and exclusive and discriminatory. Fusing those two has been really interesting. And for you to open up the curtain and let people inside, and as you said, not front of house, we're going right back, back. And it's been amazing to see that. Do you feel that aside from the work that you're doing during your time in the industry, the fashion industry has become more accessible and diversified in the way that you'd hope?