Inside The World Of Showrooms
And a critique on fashion education with visual artist and fashion sales assistant Emmanuel Yoro
This conversation is part of the series The Underrated Fashion Professionals Talks in which I interview fashion professionals from all over the world about different aspects of the industry.
For this first Underrated Fashion Talks of 2025 - which will be a two-part interview - I talked with Emmanuel Yoro, an Italian-Ivorian visual artist who also happens to know the world of showrooms and retail in Italy - he’s been working for years as a showroom and luxury department store sales assistant. Emmanuel is one of the few friends I have working in the industry with whom I can speak for hours about fashion because of his humongous knowledge. In this first instalment, Emmanuel brings us into the world of showrooms in Italy.
Hello Emmanuel, can you introduce yourself? Who are you? What do you do?
I am Emmanuel Yoro, a visual artist who makes collages and works with fabric. Now, I am trying to focus more on assemblage. I am also a sales assistant at La Rinascente1.
I studied fashion design at the IUAV of Venice2. It was only during my last year there that I realised I wasn’t much interested in pattern making or design.
I was and still am more interested in fashion communication, which was not yet taught at the IUAV when I studied there. In recent years, they have only opened a master’s course in fashion communication. Integrating such a course now in a fashion school is not very aligned with the current system, but I am glad things are changing.
There are many roles in the fashion industry, and not everyone wishes to work in a design studio. The romanticism that wants us to believe that studying fashion means becoming a fashion designer should be forgotten because it is outdated and unrealistic.
At university, I remember some students were directed towards styling, but no course was dedicated to that. On top of not having a fashion communication course per se, no great attention was paid to image production, or more precisely, to creating figures of image makers like Ib Kamara; it was pretty much focused on fashion design - which is fine. I mean, I can sew a piece of clothing and understand its pattern, which parts it is composed of, and the type of stitching or fabric it is made of. I know all the technical vocabulary of fashion design, which is fundamental.
So, that’s what I studied only to understand I wanted to focus on fashion communication. In addition to that, I recently got interested in fashion photography.
Ok, so you are a visual artist with the fashion knowledge necessary for your role as a sales assistant at La Rinascente, even though you noticed loopholes in the education you received at the IUAV. Can you talk about how your studies intertwine with your art practice and work today?
Of course. Whatever I do now does not correspond to what I studied, but everything comes back to my practice of mixed media arts with collage and other art forms, in which I incorporate fashion and fashion language.
Now, you said your journey did not prepare you for anything else than fashion design; I would like you to talk about the fact that it seems like fashion is structuring itself little by little.
It always seems that fashion education is lacking, even though stylists and other creatives have existed before. It is as if fashion schools did not consider it, or the people who made fashion never imagined it would become an industry.
Between 2012 and 2016, the period I was studying, I believe fashion communication was already what it is today. Obviously, it wasn’t as prominent because Instagram wasn’t as significant as it is today, but communication was as important, and we were already consuming fashion—or, better said, its imagery—as we do today.
Sorry to interrupt you. I think the idea of making a lot of money before in fashion wasn’t very common. Now, the tide has changed, so you need marketing, PR departments and a well-oiled and strong financial system. If we look at fashion before the 90s in Italy, it was always done by wealthy people, so investing in a business that wasn’t profitable wasn’t necessarily an issue for them.
Do you remember how The Blonde Salad was all the rage a few years ago? At that time, there was already the idea of making money with a blog, but what you said is also true: there was no concept of making money with Instagram and no influencer boom. There were some famous people, but Instagram wasn’t as powerful a fashion tool as it is today.
Nowadays, it almost seems that if a brand doesn’t have Instagram, it doesn’t exist or have a voice. Instagram is powerful because it is a platform where you can express yourself and collaborate with people from different backgrounds. So, in a certain way, it is democratic, even though everything depends on the algorithm, as it is also a political game. But today, we see it differently.
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I perfectly understand your point. Now I’d like to talk more about your work. When did you start working?
I started working in showrooms around 2019.
How did you manage to get into this world?
It was all very random, I must be honest. At the time, I still lived at my parents’ house and was looking for a job. I texted a friend with whom I studied to complain about the lack of job opportunities, and he advised me to send applications to showrooms, which I did. But I didn’t know what sales campaigns were or what a showroom was. I genuinely had no idea how they worked then.
I was confused but wanted to get some experience in the fashion industry and, most importantly, get my coins because I was broke [laughs]. That was the turning point. It was ‘thanks’ to the first campaign I did - and severe COVID restrictions - that I eventually ended up living in Milan.
Could you explain precisely what a sales campaign and a showroom are for people to understand? Many articles on fashion business sites often use both terms but don’t explain what they are.
So, what is a showroom? It is a physical space where a brand or agency showcases seasonal collections before they hit the stores.
Sales campaigns occur at specific times of the year—mostly during fashion weeks when more people come from all over the world—and can vary in length. They can take place in-house, in a building owned by the showroom, or in a location specifically rented and designed for the occasion. Sales campaigns usually last 14 to 15 days, a time during which the showroom staff's main job is to reach more buyers and sell their brands’ portfolios.
I started working for 247 [editor’s note: to pronounce twentyfourseven], which sold Heliot Emil, Mowalola, Sunflower, Medea, Collina Strada, Andreadamo, and many other emerging brands at the time. It was an exciting environment to work in, and the showroom had nice niche brands that I liked—the perfect match.
It’s very interesting that you named these brands because, in a showroom, one would expect bigger or more established names. Instead, you talked about younger brands like Collina Strada and Mowalola, for which being in a showroom is essential.
I know one of the brands you were in charge of was Off-White. Buyers from department stores and online stores come to watch the collections and buy specific categories. Are there differences between brands like Mowalola and Off-White? Can you tell about it?
Right. 247 is a showroom that has always looked at having a contemporary selection and emerging brands. I remember they were among the first to have 3.Paradis and Wales Bonner in their portfolio.
247 always had brands like Dion Lee, Medea, Melitta Baumeister and Charlotte Knowles before everyone else. In brief, they always had quite a sophisticated selection of independent designers. So, working on 247’s sales campaigns offered freedom and a much more varied public of buyers because the brands were still niche. In most cases, the designer was present the whole campaign duration, even chatting with you [about the collection, but not only] and having a coffee with you. It was very down-to-earth.
A showroom like 247 took risks and time investing in not-so-well-known brands they knew wouldn’t sell as much.
The people doing their campaigns were young and very interesting because they had a way of conceiving sales that were not dictated by money. Obviously, choosing a brand means you want to resell and earn from it, but they knew where to sell it and were daring with the brands they knew wouldn’t necessarily sell.
When you worked with and for an established brand like Off-White, it was totally different. New Guards Group had a more corporate feel [editor’s note: the company that owned the late Virgil Abloh's brand at the time] - from the buyers’ crowd to the selling style.
Business-wise, it is a great opportunity to be known as a showroom with a strong aesthetic and brands that are not easy to find.
You asked me first about bigger campaigns; for them, the sale is less free, meaning more structure and complexity. I had a specific guideline to follow.
At 247, the interaction with the buyer was much more relaxed because people didn’t have that much capital even though they were very good at research. To make a campaign with buyers of Off-White, Palm Angels, or Ambush was different because, first of all, the schedule was different. Selling their collections meant much more intense days of business. Initially, nobody bought too many Palm Angels. When I started, it was all about Marcelo Burlon and Ambush, whose collections included accessories, jewellery, and streetwear. I remember Ambush attracted the attention of the New Guards Group, which is also why I wonder why they had Kirin, Peggy Gou’s brand, when buyers could come with a budget of €500,000, €100,000 or €50,000 to spend on Off-White.
Wait a minute. I have a question. Is this budget a lot for a showroom?
Yes. To give you an idea, the buyers who came at 247 had a maximum of €10,000 to spend on a small brand. If it were a really popular brand, they would spend €40,000. It was the budget for Low Classic – a Korean brand – Adererror, in brief, all these brands whose aesthetic was close to Phoebe Philo’s minimalism. So, the numbers I mentioned earlier are really big.
These budgets were for buyers from Mytheresa and Ssense rather than Antonia, Biffi, Slam Jam or LuisaViaRoma [editor’s note: all Italian retail stores]. At least here in Italy, they came to buy Off-White, but you could tell there was a difference between the buyers. If it is true that 247 were more relaxed, it was also true that among the people who bought Off-White, you had the buyer who didn’t buy the most discounted shirt because they knew they would have sold it, or they didn’t buy the shirt with Off-White Arrow logo. Instead, they were attentive to making a more understated selection like Slam Jam could do. Ssense had a nice selection because, yes, they bought the most discounted shirts, but besides that, they also bought the accessories.
This interview is paywalled. If you enjoyed what you read so far, this is what expects you under the paywall:
Creating a sales campaign in Milan is different from creating one in Dubai. The showrooms and brands must make a selection that appeals culturally to the buyers.
Documents about the role of showroom sales assistants and explanation of specific terms used in showrooms to understand better the synergy between them and the retailers
Can a showroom sales assistant become a buyer?