Rachel Ojuromi had been in Paris for just a week when one of her oldest manifestations started to become real life. “I’ve always wanted to come to Paris,” the 22-year-old says, reflecting on a journey that began long before she booked her flight. Back in 2020, she would post videos imagining herself one day living in the French capital, surrounded by cats and the timeless architecture of the city. “And now, I’m like, ‘Hello? I’m actually in Paris?!’”
She has rightly been making the most of every single moment. By her second night in the city, Ojuromi had gathered her friends for an impromptu 3 a.m. pilgrimage to the Eiffel Tower, calling others back home in Nigeria to share the glowing landmark through a video screen. And she has been back since, drawn to the iron lattice tower time and time again. “I really, really love looking at the Eiffel Tower,” she says with a laugh. Her days have been filled with comforting meals of chicken and fries—“the French fries are actually really good”—long, meandering conversations with friends, and regular matcha runs. But nothing in her whirlwind week could possibly compare to what came next. Last night, Rachel Ojuromi made her official runway debut at Chanel.
Long before Ojuromi was walking beneath the soaring glass roof of the Grand Palais, she was making Lagos her own personal runway. Working closely with her best friend, stylist, and designer Debby Fasingha, Ojuromi began attracting widespread attention online with exuberant fit-check videos. These clips placed her precise model walk and vibrant, reference-heavy looks against the rich legacy of maximalist Nollywood and the everyday bustle of her hometown. Viral videos show her striding and strutting through Lagos streets in fuchsia fringed skirts and animal print co-ords, louche tailored suits, luxurious layering, and corseted gowns—all worn while running everyday errands like buying vegetables from a local market, picking up the morning newspaper, or balancing a basket of bananas gracefully on her head.
There are joyous color combinations, textural delights, and plenty of aesthetic-hopping that capture the imagination. It is a creative conceit that resonates because it is simultaneously simple and magnetic: if the traditional fashion world was not immediately accessible to her doorstep, she decided she would build one around herself. That entrepreneurial and artistic spirit is something Ojuromi has continued to uplift through her own cultural platform, The Process Africa.
Lagos remains fundamentally tied to the way Ojuromi sees herself and her art. Born and raised in Nigeria, she has frequently spoken about her home city as something deeply embedded in everything she creates. Even as those street-side fashion walks began traveling far beyond local borders and capturing a global audience online, they remained unmistakably rooted in the vibrant energy of Lagos. In Paris, that distinct instinct suddenly found itself transported onto fashion’s most rarefied and prestigious stage.
Ojuromi’s relationship with the House of Chanel had already taken on a strangely prophetic quality over the years. While she had been referencing historic Chanel collections for quite some time, it was her viral recreation of the Métiers d’Art show that truly propelled her toward this moment. “That video was a vehicle that led us to where we are now,” she acknowledges. Still, she remains cautious about framing any of this as an overnight success story. “It’s a series of compounding events. It’s never overnight. It’s all your life you work towards something.”
Ojuromi describes herself as someone who has always been resolutely stubborn about seeing an idea through to its conclusion. Once she decides on a course of action, she feels a deep compulsion to make it a reality—even, she jokes, when that decision is as simple as cutting her hair. “Every time I ever had an idea, I always made sure to see it through,” she says. Having an idea and executing it, believing in your dreams, and believing in yourself is, to her mind, the precise formula of how she ultimately ended up walking for one of the world’s most legendary luxury houses.
The confirmation itself arrived amid an otherwise ordinary day. Ojuromi was sitting comfortably at home in a robe—“I love robes. I’m always wearing robes”—when her team called with the life-changing news. Her initial reaction was almost comically calm: “Oh, of course.” The true enormity of the achievement only began to land later, during the very first lineup for the show. “I started crying because I was like, ‘Wait, wait, wait, wait… what’s going on?’”
Making her runway debut under the tenure of Matthieu Blazy adds an extra layer of poignancy to the milestone. Ojuromi remembers listening to a podcast about Gabrielle Chanel while walking down the street last year, becoming utterly fascinated by a woman who lived fully and relentlessly pursued what she wanted despite being told otherwise. Blazy’s work had also resonated with her long before Chanel officially entered the picture. She recalls seeing his leather ready-to-wear collections at Bottega Veneta and being profoundly struck by his unique understanding of “the impact of simplicity.” When she first heard he was moving to Chanel, she remembers thinking: “Wow, my two worlds are colliding.”
For the show, Ojuromi wore a sophisticated gray and yellow tweed shirt and midi skirt—a detail made even more meaningful because the sunshine shade is Debby’s absolute favorite color. “When I saw my look, I was like, ‘It’s a sign. This is a sign,’” she says. The textured tweed felt instinctively right to Ojuromi, who viewed her ensemble as a youthful, fresh interpretation of one of the fashion house’s most recognizable historical codes. Her beauty look, featuring gleaming skin and braids pulled back neatly, was similarly unfussy. “They wanted me to look exactly like me and I really appreciate that,” she says. “I look so pretty. I feel really pretty.”
The night before the big show was spent at a final refit, getting her hair styled, and then decompressing with friends over drinks before, inevitably, taking one more run back to see the Eiffel Tower. The following morning began with matcha and, crucially, a proper night’s sleep. “No way, I have to sleep,” she remembers thinking. “I have to be well rested, ready to go.”
She practiced her walk, too. For someone whose energetic stomp through the streets of Lagos helped introduce her to much of the internet, natural nerves still arrived when the high-stakes Chanel runway beckoned. “I wanted to make sure that nothing goes wrong. I don’t stumble on my feet.” More experienced models backstage—including Bhavitha Mandava and Anok Yai—helped settle those pre-show jitters, reminding Ojuromi to stay calm, let loose, and, most importantly, remember that she truly deserved to be there. By the time she stepped out onto the runway, the advice had firmly sunk in. “I was having fun,” she says. “I was like, ‘Yeah, I deserve to be here, of course!’”
Backstage after the show, the overwhelming emotions caught up with her once again. When Ojuromi started crying, the people around her closed ranks, offering immediate reassurance and helping her pull herself together before any cameras could catch her. “You got this girl, don’t stress,” she remembers being told. She had a quick glam retouch. “Of course it didn’t look like I was crying because, diva,” she jokes.
Inevitably, her thoughts return to Lagos. Ojuromi remembers sitting on her couch back home, watching a Chanel runway presentation on a screen, and wondering whether she and her friends could somehow create a fashion world of their own. And so they did—and now, she has walked the real thing on one of the fashion calendar’s biggest stages.
Her message back home is simple yet profound: “You can dream, you can believe in something, and it can just work out,” she says. “You can dream yourself into a life that is possible even if nobody else gets it.” From the bustling markets of Lagos to the grand architecture of the Grand Palais, Ojuromi stands as compelling proof of that concept.
