Armand is the co-founder and creative director of Yohomo, where he channels his deep roots in fashion, music, and culture into vibrant, community-driven storytelling. He brings his fashion eye to life at FeelnGood Studio — a creative production house specializing in photography and video for fashion and beauty brands. When he's not behind the scenes organizing unforgettable events, you’ll find him DJing at venues like the Ace Hotel, The Black Eagle, or lighting up the gayest summer day parties across the city.
Is there a connection between picking an outfit and putting together a playlist for a DJ set?
⎯⎯⎯ For me, it's always about storytelling. When it comes to music and fashion, the way I see it, it's also a power move. It's all choosing, it's all editing, and it's all the same principles that are being put towards telling a story or coming up with something that will tell people about yourself, or show people who you are. When it comes to DJing, for instance, if it's a fashion client, or I'm doing a party, like a day party versus a night party, that makes a difference because the people I am storytelling to are always going to be different. I think it's a way to show how diverse musical taste can be, but also how I put it together and show who I am. Even picking the outfit for said DJ set, there's a strategy to that.
Just to get a little bit more granular into that: you've got your mix, you know what you're going to play, but how do you decide what you are going to wear?
⎯⎯⎯ I think a lot of it's a feeling. I also think about who the crowd is, who I'm playing for, and who the client is. A lot of the time, all the crowd sees is my upper half, so it's almost like a Zoom meeting. You're not really going to see my pants or my shoes, but obviously, there's always a head-to-toe aspect to it. I need my headphones, and if I'm using my arms quite a bit, I can't really have a lot of obstruction, but I also love DJing in a suit. I like to DJ in some kind of suit if the weather's nice, and it doesn't feel stuffy, because I think there's a way you're at the helm of something, and there’s a lot of energy exchange with people. So I think you have to assert your presence. Also, I'm shorter, so I try to look and feel as tall as I can.
I want to go back in time a little bit and ask at what stage in life you developed a passion for music and fashion? Which one came first?
⎯⎯⎯ So I grew up in Ottawa, and my brother was eight years older than me, so by the time I was eight years old, he was 16, but we were always quite close. He kind of introduced me to R&B and hip hop, which would have been like the early 90s. That time was about the mix of R&B and glam, there was Bad Boy and Timberland, and music videos were such a big thing. So I think the combination of fashion and music really came together there, and as a queer kid growing up, that really appealed to me. I think growing up in Ottawa, or Canada in general, everything felt very rock-oriented. My first retail job was working at Club Monaco in the Rideau Center and I felt like these are queer people, and gay people, and it was very hyper stylized, you know, it was very influential and became a very influential presence in my personal aesthetic. Working in the mall led to nightlife, where it all came together, because not only is it music and fashion, it's also culture. I'm really passionate about people in general and how people and culture affect things like music and fashion, but they're always kind of happening all at the same time, I guess. So it wasn't until I started DJing, probably about 10 or 12 years ago, that I was able to mix it in that way, but I always knew that it needed to happen. I always knew I wanted to work in it in both ways. I loved the idea of working at MTV because it was just such a cool concept; it's young people, it’s media, it’s performance. It was the idea of putting all those things together.
The retail environment is so tightly linked to music; was that something that you recognized? That you were getting introduced to music while also being immersed in fashion?
⎯⎯⎯ Totally. At that time, I think I was only into the R&B world, and then there was the whole alternative rock era, so when I started working in that retail environment, because obviously they're trying to create a vibe and push a brand, it was a lot of trip hop and acid jazz. So that's kind of where my interest in Jamiroquai came from, and the idea of these retail songs, which are actually kind of funny, but still really good. That's my first introduction to drum and bass in the fashion way and not necessarily the rave way. Obviously the Brit influence was very heavy. I would go to this Brit-pop night at Zaphod Beeblebrox because it was the only club I could get into when I was 16, and it was very influential for me. It was always the idea of dance music being mixed in with these other genres within these retail spaces, and the music was actually quite good. You're like, what is this, and you’d check the CD and it’s like Morcheeba.
I was gonna say Buddha Bar, but Morcheeba is perfect.
⎯⎯⎯ Cafe Del Mar. They’re what I call spa compilations.
Speaking about culture and these worlds coming together to build community, can you take us back to what led you and Phil Villeneuve to start Yohomo together?
⎯⎯⎯ Of course. The reason Phil and I met was because I was in a band around 2007 or 2008 called Fritz Helder and the Phantoms. We were a very queer forward fashion band. It’s kind of like the original drag queen diss track. It's about clubbing. It felt almost like an Andy Warhol project. Our lead singer was a drag queen. Basically, it was like Black Eyed Peas meets Lady Gaga all at the same time. Our first and only album was called Greatest Hits, and I remember reading an enRoute magazine, just traveling around, touring, and the only review I’d read was from this person, Phil, and if you know Phil, it was the most Phil review ever; super gay superlatives, like, “honey you have to listen to this album,” which was just amazing. So then we ended up crossing paths and working together at Xtra and Fab Magazine, because he was the editor and I was the style columnist at the time. I would talk about gay fashion stuff once a month, but we were also both DJing at the time and throwing our own parties. In 2016, Facebook was just your circle of friends, and you wouldn't know anything that was going on outside of it, and because we were DJs and just people about town, we would be invited to all kinds of parties across a lot of different crowds and communities. So we said, “There's gotta be a place where we can put it all together and have all the event listings.” A year previous, we had done this art project called Yohomo because this ‘no homo’ hashtag was trending all over Twitter, and I'm like, that's such fucking bullshit, I'm going to reclaim it. So we created Yohomo, and did some videos, and an art event during Pride, and then when Phil and I were trying to put this platform together, we're like, “let's call it Yohomo.” So that's kind of how it was birthed. It started as event listings, but because of his background in Xtra, and my background in fashion, we decided to talk about all different kinds of arts and culture scenes and created a blog out of it. And since I was into fashion, we were like, “Oh my God, why don't we do merch things?” I always wanted it to be a bit of a streetwear label, like a Supreme kind of vibe, but gay. Then, since we both come from the DJ world, we were like, “let's throw parties.” So it was a really good way to cover a lot of different things and create communities while playing to our strengths.
What do you think has changed since 2016 when you started Yohomo?
⎯⎯⎯ You know, it's definitely something that was needed, but people didn't necessarily know that they needed it. It's great because now everyone's a little bit dependent on it, which is good, but we've gone through a lot. Obviously, COVID changed a ton, but it kind of seems now at this point in 2025, we're back in that way before COVID in terms of so much happening. What's interesting now is that with the administrations globally and this kind of global shift, things are starting to get taken away again. So now more than ever, I think it's important, because as a community, we're still together, we're banding together. And I think as more nuances are created within communities, it does get harder to keep people together. But what we try to do is keep people together through things that bring us joy: nightlife, dancing, art, music, because these are the things that can create a community and keep it together.
I always think of joy as a form of resistance, maybe even persistence, of pushing forward. Whether in fashion, music, dancing, or organizing, how important is joy now?
⎯⎯⎯ Just for the person that I am, I've never been overly emo. I love dark things, and I love dark aesthetics, but I've never been that type of person to create a darker vibe or scenario for people. I think if it can be done well, it's beautiful, and you're connecting to emotions that you've never really thought you'd connected to, but the ways I've been authentic to myself have been through joy, daytime, uplifting music, that kind of thing. And it's interesting, especially in the fashion realm, because fashion is kind of dark, but it’s all about attitude. Attitude through joy is its own resistance. Like, being unbothered actually just makes the other side even more furious. In my queer life, I always knew that joy, laughter, and dancing were always the things that were gonna help me feel powerful, and make me feel as if I could take on anything. That is what connects friends, the amount of laughter and unseriousness you share sometimes, because at the end of the day, we're all kind of trying to just get through it. So why bother doing it in sadness when you could do it through joy, and tap into the things that can make you happy, that people can't take away? I think that's been the thing this year, especially. It's like, no, you'll never take away the joy, because that's a feeling in here. That's the part you can't take out of anything.
That leads us neatly into chatting a little bit about Do West Fest. So, let's talk about joy. Let's talk about Do West Fest. What did you do and how did it go?
⎯⎯⎯ It’s called Gay Gardens, and I think this is our third or fourth year. This is one of Phil's babies for sure. We started in a little patio thing outside The Fountain a few years ago, and had a day of drag queens, but have moved to a larger parking lot beside an alley, and Gay Gardens has become, I guess, an iconic institution within Do West Fest. It's so funny because we only do Friday and Saturday, but Friday night's cool because it kind of feels a little more local, a little more chill, and we feel a little more West End. And then Saturday as of 1 PM, we're open, and by 3 PM, we have a lineup around the block, or down the alley, which was good because apparently there were safety concerns this year, so they had to shut us down early at like 10:40, which, you know what, in the end was okay with me, because we got out a little bit earlier before people got too spicy. We always try to control the vibe as much as we can. I went on at 9:30, and we had Zellers, an amazing techno rave DJ, and he really brought the energy up. It was almost like a spinning top. And I'm like, okay, we're going to actually go up into the air. So we had to soothe it down. I put on a little bit of Euro dance and then ended up putting on some late-nineties R&B and hip hop, and I think it just kind of gets people in a mood to leave. And then we had to cut it off early, which was not ideal for us, but it's always good to trail it out a little bit. We're doing you a favour, everyone, by just kind of letting you go home in a way that you're going to be okay. That's a lot of the narrative arc.
When it comes to DJing, is there a technical process to understanding the room and being a part of that energy exchange?
⎯⎯⎯ It's interesting because I guess it's something that I would always feel, but not necessarily understand, or know what to do with. As a DJ, a lot of us get crazy performance anxiety, right? Because a lot of people are projecting their energy, or their feelings about what they think should be happening to an entire room, onto you. And it's like, how do you deal with it? I don’t really do weddings. I don't really do a lot of nightlife gigs. Because to me it's a lot of voices coming into your head, including your own, and a pressure to perform or to be responsible for the entire energy of a room. Maybe it's because I can feel it potentially more than other people that I feel that responsibility. But I did a wedding, a gay wedding, and it's long – I think I ended up DJing for six hours or something, which is a lot of songs, it’s a lot to bring people on – but then I just told myself, “just shut it out, you're going to be fine.” So I think a lot of the technical key would just be to pick and choose what you're going to take from it. Half of it's disassociating, and then half of it's being in it. Obviously people love songs, but as nights go later, the songs just have to get shorter and shorter. I think that probably is a technical part, but I think for me, the way I like to DJ, I do like to take them up, but then give them something unexpected that shifts the energy in a way. It may not be down, but it shifts a little bit in a way that people aren't going to be expecting it. As much as they think they're going to want to be on the dance floor all day or all night, they're not always going to want to be. So it's okay if that happens. It's okay if you clear out a dance floor, you can just always bring them back again.
What are the stages of development for your set? Do you cast a wide net and then pick and choose, or do you kind of dial right in right away?
⎯⎯⎯ I cast a wide net a lot of the time. For me, I prefer to just know my music. I think that's the key, because sometimes I'll try to put new music in, and then if I don't know the song from the beginning, I don't know when to build in something else. So I always like to have a good wide net. A lot of the time I can be a little bit repetitive, because I know what mixes well together, but depending on what crowd you've played it for, they may not have heard it yet. I love a new crowd for that reason. But I think to me, it's just knowing your audience, or knowing what party you're getting invited into, and then also showing something new. You don't always want to be the person that's going to give them what they want. You want to give them what they want, but also give them other things that they didn't even think they knew they wanted until you gave it to them. As a DJ, I think it's important to really show people new things, because otherwise, you could just be a Spotify playlist or something. I've always said, they're going to remember your first song and your last song. So even if you bomb in the middle, as long as you really take care of them at the end, they'll always consider you a good DJ. I think my longest set has been six hours, and sometimes those are my favorite because you can just really take the audience on the journey. For me, it's about being in what I call the pocket. And you can just tell what people are feeling, in a way that's positive. It's not like they're asking me to change something up. They're giving me their energy in a positive way, and I’m giving them something positive back. It’s about having that confidence to roll with it versus saying to yourself, “I don't know what to play next,” or “I'm not really feeling it.” It really is an exchange between your audience and you.
Do you feel like part of your responsibility as a DJ, or maybe even privilege as a DJ, is to be an educational resource? Sharing stuff with people and illuminating the history of music?
⎯⎯⎯ I would say so. DJing is not my primary career. And I always want to give that to people who really do this every day. Because I don't think I could ever do this as a full-time thing. I think that would actually take the joy away from it for me. It's funny, I grew up in the late 90s listening to late 90s progressive house and house music. Now that’s what I play. Phil and I did Cherry Beach Promise last year, which can be kind of an intimidating crowd because that's an institution they've been doing for so long, and I sometimes have weird imposter syndrome about being a DJ, but I was like, you know what I'm going to play? I'm just going to play what I love and play stuff from that era. And it was amazing. And I think that is the part: that I felt good about it. So then people felt good about it, and people received it. I think the education piece comes into the music part. The music that you're playing that I've never heard of, I'm going to listen to and find out about it. For the technical part, I do love the idea that DJing is so accessible and democratic, where it used to be so exclusive. And there would be no way you could do it unless you invested tons of money in records and equipment. And now there's something called a stroller where you can basically rent a CDJ studio for two hours. So then if you're playing gigs, you don't have to buy that equipment, which is so crazy expensive. So I think it's really good that it's become so accessible, because people are sharing information, doing workshops, that kind of thing, and I think it’s so important. I think the accessibility, combined with the music is empowering people to just play at home and do it yourself, for yourself. Because music is that thing that is going to heal you and give you joy.
–Work Redux is a collection of mixes made to be listened to while working. We work closely with local and international DJs to assemble thoughtful music that will carry members throughout their day and introduce them to new sounds. –East Room is a shared workspace company providing design-forward office solutions, authentic programming and a diverse community to established companies and enterprising freelancers. We explore art, design, music, and entrepreneurship. Visit our News & Stories page to read more.
