Terrell has a goal to bolster the city’s profile as a design industry mecca by connecting creators and retailers. A new incubator space called The Loom will amplify the effort.
Columbus Fashion Alliance founder and marketing executive Yohannan Terrell has refined his analogy for Columbus over the years.
Yogi, as most people call him, likens the city to the student who initially sits in the back of the class, maybe wearing glasses. “But they got really good bone structure, really good hair,” Terrell says, laughing. “You’re like, ‘Yo, if you just take those glasses off, man, you might pop that top button off,’ and then they do it and all of a sudden, it’s like … they’re hot.”
Columbus doesn’t need to search for a new identity, he says during a conversation at the alliance’s Idea Foundry space in July. He believes it needs to fully embrace what already lies under the surface. That good bone structure.
For as long as Terrell has used the analogy, he’s had an underlying agenda to go with it. He works day and night on this mission he’s conceived: to convince others that Columbus needs to fully embrace fashion as an industry central to its culture.
Talk about Central Ohio’s business climate, and local leaders might talk about the booming biotechnology sector, data centers or Anduril Industries’ military drone facility, which is expected to be the largest job-creation project in Ohio history.
Terrell, who lives near Easton, would send you in another direction.
Long a test market for fast food and retailers based on its Midwest location and its concentration of corporate headquarters, Columbus has consistently ranked highly for the number of fashion designers who call the city home. In 2012, an analysis by Bloomberg ranked it third, just behind New York City and Los Angeles. That’s due in no small part to retail pioneer Les Wexner, who grew The Limited into the L Brands empire that ruled malls for decades and in turn drew other fashion retailers to the region. Today, in addition to Victoria’s Secret & Co., Abercrombie & Fitch, DSW and others are headquartered here.
“I’m not going to say it’s not homegrown, the tech industry, right?” Terrell says. “But at the same time, those are newer industries coming here.”
At the alliance’s headquarters, located on the second floor of the Idea Foundry in Franklinton, reminders of Terrell’s mission are everywhere. Off-white mannequins abound—some clothed, some not. In a lab, white desks—most topped with a sewing machine—line the walls. There are large cutting tables, threads in every hue, embroidery machines, and magazines and other reading material. Just the right amount of organized chaos.
In adjacent rooms, neon LED signs proclaim, “FASHION IS OUR BUSINESS.” One, in what Terrell calls the “war room,” hangs next to framed pictures of students who have completed summer programs with the fashion alliance. He points out, proudly, where each one went after.
Terrell founded the Columbus Fashion Alliance in 2019. The nonprofit aims to contribute to individual designers’ and fashion businesses’ growth by educating, coaching and facilitating connections between creatives and fashion retailers, according to its mission statement. CFA has raised and reinvested $6 million toward that goal, funded in part by the city of Columbus, Franklin County and supporters like Battelle, the Columbus Foundation and Victoria’s Secret, Terrell says. In 2023, it reported total revenue of $1.5 million.
Students—who take over CFA machinery each summer—move the mission forward. Terrell also sees the organization’s headquarters as somewhere creatives can come and just create, without high overhead cost.
The alliance has five full-time employees, and several more sets of hands come from part-time and contract positions. “We’re a small but mighty family trying to learn and grow. The nonprofit industry is hard,” he says.
Lessons from influential role models
Akron-born Terrell, 48, wasn’t thinking much about what he was wearing in his youth. His coming-of-age tale resembles that of “a majority of young Black kids” who weren’t wealthy, he says. His family moved from one home to the next, received government assistance and frequented the food bank.
“Broken home, broken family. Mom, dad, sister in a small household, and basically drugs and alcohol kind of destroyed our family,” he says.
One memory that stands out is how he really wanted Air Jordans, the signature black-and-red court shoes that rolled out in the mid-1980s. His dad scored a pair of knockoff sneakers instead. “I remember telling myself, ‘Man, as soon as I get a job, I’m going to buy all the stuff I want,’” he says.
Terrell played on the North High School football team and got a brief look from some scouts from Dartmouth College, although neither he nor his friends were familiar with the Ivy League school then. It dawned on him later the trajectory his life might have taken.
Even if it was not “the greatest childhood,” Terrell says, there were women who watched him closely. One was his mother, Harriet. “She was serious about me doing good in school, and if I didn’t do good in school, I had to be careful. Old school, she’s an old-school mom,” he says. “And while I was still running the streets and getting in trouble, I was more afraid of my mom than I was of the streets.”
The second guiding figure was Cheryl Russell, who with her husband mentored kids and took Terrell under her wing. “Cheryl, she knew I was smart, and she was like, ‘What are you going to do about college?’ And I was like, ‘I don’t know.’ I didn’t even know the first thing,” he says.
Russell took him to the library, where they filled out and submitted college applications, including to Ohio State University. He didn’t have the money, so she covered his application fees. When he was admitted to Ohio State, he says, “that was the catalyst that kind of changed my life.”
“I had a son when I was 18, so I was still very much tethered to Akron. I still was trying to dig myself out of that history of where I was coming from, that environment,” he says.
But he dug.
His son, Travon, is now 29 and a dentist. His daughter, 19-year-old Chayana, is getting ready to study film at the University of Cincinnati.
Another influential woman in his life is his cousin Fredericka Wallace-Deena, who has worked nationally and locally in philanthropy. Wallace-Deena now runs a fundraising firm, and the two talk frequently.
“He’s just amazing … the way he thinks about things, there’s no limits. He’s always going to think about something,” she says. “If it says, ‘do not answer or do not go here,’ if he thinks that it should be crossed, he’s going to figure out a way that everyone can travel safely.”
After graduating from Ohio State with a bachelor’s in psychology and a minor in marketing, Terrell worked in clubs and events and was hired by Wallace-Deena to do marketing for United Way of Central Ohio. He also worked in radio at Interactive One and launched a publication focused on urban culture, Flypaper Magazine.
The nonprofit industry is tough, Terrell says. “Everybody’s vying for dollars.”
Wallace-Deena says it can be tough in particular for primarily Black nonprofits because of persistent income inequality. Still, according to an Urban Institute study from 2018, nonwhite families tend to donate a greater percentage of their earnings to charities than white families.
Terrell does well because he focuses his efforts beyond the barriers that race and class can create, Wallace-Deena says. If silos exist in an environment Terrell inhabits, she says, he is dismantling them.
Doug Kridler, president and CEO of the Columbus Foundation, commends Terrell for his commitment to inclusion. The foundation was one of the earliest CFA funders. “What I make of Yogi’s vision for the city is, it’s filled with the many voices and a truly diverse sensibility that reflects the full measure of our city’s residents and the inherent value that that diversity brings to the richness,” Kridler says.
He says busy institutions move fast, and ideas tend to distract from the grind toward what is next. What strikes Kridler about Terrell, he says, is how “undeterred [he is] by the fact that it’s not easy to take an idea into reality.”
“He has an infectious enthusiasm that I think cities need,” Kridler says.
Building community connections
That enthusiasm translates into a very busy schedule beyond CFA. Blocks of engagements fill Terrell’s color-coded digital calendar.
Ten years ago, he cofounded marketing firm Warhol & Wall Street after getting his feet wet at United Way. Terrell says he isn’t as involved in the day-to-day anymore. Over the years, the agency has done branding and engagement work locally and for national brands like Mountain Dew and Red Bull.
He’s got a long list of involvements, including serving as a member of the Experience Columbus board of directors and Greater Columbus Arts Council board of trustees, and he is also involved with the Lincoln Theatre and the Short North Alliance.
“I like big city energy, right? I was going to move years ago, but because I had my kids here, I couldn’t move. So, a mentor of mine was like, ‘If you are yearning for more excitement, cultural excitement, then get involved civically.’ And that’s what I did,” he says.
He jokes now that he’s too tied down to ever leave Columbus.
More recently, he channeled that enthusiasm into work with Downtown Columbus Inc., the private, nonprofit development organization that advocates for major local projects. Terrell traveled and studied other cities’ cultures and resources as part of the 2022 strategic plan. The question in front of him was, “How do we make Columbus feel like everybody’s Columbus?”
Terrell’s answer is a bit like a ladder of engagement. If done right, he says, Downtown’s surface parking lots would be used frequently for vendors’ markets. The city would invest more in walking and biking trails that connect sites and neighborhoods, without the need for cars. And the buzz he’s creating builds. “Culture—whatever that culture is in your city—it creates energy, and that energy attracts people, and people attract commerce, and those combinations attract or build communities,” he says.
Just look at the community Terrell builds each summer at CFA.
On this Tuesday in July, a cohort of local high schoolers is hard at work building a fashion brand from scratch. By the end of the summer, from that collection they’re creating, about 3,000 pieces will be produced and given away to other students at a pop-up shop.
Eighteen-year-old Sahr Julian Rashid-Noah, of Pickerington, is a lead in the cohort. This fall, he’ll be studying communication design and fashion design at the Parsons School of Design in New York City. Columbus has grown “real gems” in the fashion industry who have influenced his work, he says. “They all leave Columbus, obviously, and try to cultivate their own skills, but they always come back,” Rashid-Noah says.
Take Valentina Thompson and Madison Hilson, Ohio State graduates who founded the women’s outdoor brand Seniq in 2023. Just before that, they worked for Backcountry.com, which is headquartered in Utah.
“We’re building Seniq in Columbus because it’s the best city in the country to launch a brand. The mentorship, the retail infrastructure, the cost of living, the creativity … it’s truly unmatched,” Thompson says via email.
As his summer cohort works, Terrell is fielding real estate calls. CFA will move to a new headquarters soon, which he’s named The Loom. He’s working to finalize CFA’s purchase of the Columbus College of Art & Design building at 161 N. Grant Ave. with a loan from IFF and grant funding of $1 million from the county and $600,000 from the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Programming funds won’t be used for the building, Terrell says.
The Loom will serve as a fashion incubator with retail, event space and more. CCAD’s fashion design major long has churned out successful graduates, and he envisions investing further in the infrastructure for them to grow.
In early September, CFA and CCAD announced a collaboration centered around The Loom that the organizations hope will further fashion design education and the design industry in the region. According to the Franklin County Auditor’s Office, the Grant Avenue building purchase closed on Aug. 20, with CFA Development Partners paying $3.6 million for the property.
“This is where the industry and the culture will converge,” Terrell says. “There’s nothing like this in the Midwest, for sure. The closest thing to it would be in New York and L.A., and even in New York and L.A., there’s not too many nonprofits that have a whole building dedicated to the culture of fashion.”
As Terrell heads to his next meeting, where he’s got a decaf mocha with almond milk waiting, he laughs when asked if he ever has downtime. He shows a recent tattoo on his left arm that reads: “You have, can, and will do hard things.”
“I remind myself of that when I’m trying to do things, like change the city through fashion,” Terrell says, “Like, why not?”
About Yohannan “Yogi” Terrell
CEO, Warhol & Wall Street; Founder and director, Columbus Fashion Alliance
Age: 48
Previous: Online editor at Interactive One
Education: Bachelor’s degree in psychology with a minor in marketing, Ohio State University
Involvement: Experience Columbus, Greater Columbus Arts Council, Lincoln Theatre, Short North Alliance
Resides: Easton area
Family: Children Travon and Chayana Terrell
This story appeared in the September 2025 issue of Columbus Monthly. It has been updated to reflect the CFA-CCAD collaboration and the building purchase. Subscribe here.
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