Prepare To Waste Hours Of Your Life Watching YouTube's New Fashion Channel

I love a good YouTube session but, as a fashion and beauty fan, the one thing that irritates me is having to spend time searching for new content. The company has clearly heard my grievances. On Thursday, YouTube launched a fashion channel dedicated to showcasing the best and brightest style and beauty vloggers and celebrity talent.

It's all the work of YouTube's fashion and beauty head, Derek Blasberg. A man with plenty of A-list connections, Blasberg has encouraged several celebrities and fashion brands to launch or reinvigorate their YouTube channels. Victoria Beckham is one of the more prominent names, reports the New York Times. So is Naomi Campbell, thanks to her epic plane cleaning video.

According to Blasberg, YouTube's latest launch isn't a channel, per se, but a "vertical". He explained to the Evening Standard that it's made up of "hundreds of existing channels, including endemic creators, publications, and brands, [who] populate the destination with their video content."

"When I joined the platform last summer," he continued, "I saw the hunger from viewers who loved consuming content from the style community — and I wanted to give them more, so /Fashion is the place where anyone seeking style content can find the latest runway looks, get inspiration for your seasonal wardrobe, and just enjoy fashion."

Currently, the so-called vertical is split into several sections encompassing beauty and style tutorials, red carpet fashion, careers advice, closet tours, and a look inside the lives of models. YouTube has already been the driving force behind several notable collaborations, including Pete Davidson's behind-the-scenes guide to being an Alexander Wang model, drag queen Violet Chachki's makeover of YouTuber Gigi Gorgeous, and the Dolan twins' martial arts entrance at a Louis Vuitton show.

The likes of Jackie Aina, Huda Beauty, Alexa Chung, and Rosie Huntington-Whiteley have already signed up to appear on the vertical along with brands like Dior and Gucci and publications including Vogue and Love magazine. Blasberg's aim is to make "slash fashion", as he and his team call it, a truly inclusive place. As well as plans to live stream the latest catwalk collections, the team are working on bringing "more international voices to the page."

There's definitely an appetite for fashion and beauty videos. According to YouTube, the number of channels in these areas has grown rapidly in recent years. From 2014 to 2018, figures grew by more than six times. And in 2018, these channels alone produced billions of views. (The new vertical already has almost a million followers.)

I'm all up for spending an entire day inanely watching Vogue's 73 Questions and trying to recreate a perfectly contoured face, but there's one thing YouTube is still missing. And that's some good, gossipy Love Island content. I want to see the ins and outs of contestants creating PrettyLittleThing, Boohoo, and Missguided collections. I want to see Amber Gill combine her beauty skills with some relaxing ASMR. I want Amy Hart to become the dating guru of YouTube.

All in good time, I suppose. For now, there's hundreds of hours of content to click play on.