Welcome to the Scoop: a weekly email series in which I quiz fashion insiders on the stories of the week. This will be a way for the Vogue Business community to synthesize and reflect on the latest headlines and get a little inside scoop every Friday.
This week’s guest is David Martin, founder and editor-in-chief of Odda magazine, a.k.a. likely the nicest person on fashion’s front row, which he seems to be on constantly. While the rest of us editors, buyers and assorted fashion people alternate between cities and seasons to share the workload with colleagues, David seems to be everywhere, all at once.
After traveling for another long fashion month, David is back in London for a little while working on the next issue of Odda, which comes out in October. I called him up because he had some news to share about his plans afterwards.
Hi David, what’s the scoop?
Next year is Odda’s 15th anniversary — we launched the magazine on April 14, 2012. We will celebrate over the entire year but the festivities will start with the launch of Issue 32 on April 14, 2027. In terms of content, I am looking to celebrate the people that have been part of our history — those who have been featured but also worked with me on it. I am also considering printing limited editions focused on specific territories. We launched Odda Korea in 2020 and it has been a success. I’m also speaking with sculptor Rona Pondick, who we featured in the magazine in 2022, about a collaboration but it’s too early to know what that would look like yet.
Why did you launch Odda in the first place?
I was 23 and I wanted to connect with the industry — I wanted to connect with designers, the photographers, and the brands. I didn’t come from a fashion background, but ever since I saw Lady Gaga in McQueen in “Bad Romance”, I knew I wanted to be part of that world. I started making sketches and randomly emailed Nicola Formichetti who was working with Gaga at the time, I didn’t know him. He advised me to apply to Central Saint Martins, which I did, and I studied there for three months but ended up dropping out — design wasn’t for me. Then I started a blog, where I was interviewing designers and the brands started inviting me to the shows.
