Street Souk is the annual home for Nigerian Streetwear

2023 has dawned the year of the African creative, as young creative talents across fashion, art, music, and more continue to take front stage and center, consciously telling their stories and breaking new front tiers from their home countries. Regardless of the many steps made forward in many of the African creative scenes – many still suffer from a lack of awareness. An example would be the streetwear scene, a subset of the fashion industry that’s been brewing underground in Africa only to be caught wind by the bold step of the creative director and founder of the biggest annual streetwear convention, Iretidayo Zaccheus, founder of Street Souk,

With the creation of her streetwear convention Street Souk, creatives now have a community that promotes their artistry and share innovative ideas. Street Souk was founded in 2018 by Iretidayo Zaccheus as an annual convention specifically to amplify streetwear fashion in Nigeria, showcasing fashion from the city and by the city, an ensemble of what the kids are wearing and want to wear selling directly to their target audience.

It’s the only one of its kind right now because it’s not a festival, it’s not a beach party, it’s a streetwear festival that kind of incorporates everything else into it. Also, it’s not every day you see so many young people come together to celebrate streetwear, and that is what is so different about [Street Souk].

Seeing so many cool young people in the same place, having fun, brands selling, the streetwear community coming together and even having my nephew Zacai—who wasn’t born when I first started Street Souk—walking around was amazing for me.

says Ireti of this year’s event.

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The visibility of this platform each year has made it more recognized and recommended by other talents who have testified to the unity of the Streetsouk community. Streetwear culture speaks directly to young Nigerians as a reflection of their environment and personas, Street Souk brings this community of shared taste under one roof to celebrate the diversity, youth, style, and subcultures that tap into this ethos as well.

Street Souk turned 5 last year, and the once little community has grown to become more genial to more brands in the streetwear scene. The annual convention has gone through different phases and despite these phases, the impact on the creative community has only grown to become more progressive.

Since it launched five years ago, the convention has grown from 40 vendors and 1,500 attendees in its first year to over 115 vendors and more than 5,000 people in attendance. 

More than 70 per cent of Nigeria’s 206 million population is made up of young people under 30, making it a prime hub for both local and global creative expressions. And with over 15 million Nigerians living in the diaspora, the country continues to benefit from a rich cultural exchange. From music to film, arts and now streetwear, young Nigerians are continuously exploring new creative terrains and interpreting them in an authentically Nigerian way.

Nelcon C J writes for I-D.

Its collaboration in 2020 with the late American fashion designer and founder of Off-White, Virgil Abloh was a significant contribution to the convention. The essence of this collaboration was to create limited editions of t-shirts to celebrate young Nigerian women. His collection named “I support Young Black Businesses” and Iretidayo’s vision for Street Souk to promote African streetwear brands was a powerful union to highlight the authenticity of the ever-evolving culture.

“In year 7, my friends Alex, Ore, and I started a streetwear blog called Rejuvenation of Swag. From then on I was researching and learning about A$AP Rocky, Pharrell, Virgil [during his] Pyrex era, and Odd Future. Those were my earliest memory of falling in love with streetwear.” Iretidayo Zaccheus told OkayAfrica.

Ever since this collaboration, the community has gotten more visibility from more creatives in Africa and beyond making it the biggest and the first annual streetwear convention in West Africa. In a bid to reach out to more people using the support they have gotten so far, Street Souk has had various pop-ups both sponsored and self-hosted within and outside Nigeria.

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This year, there were multiple collaborations with brands who had their stands at the event, and in preparation for the big day, Street Souk launched its first pop-up event in London. Held at Kick game UK, Covent Garden store on the 22nd-25th October, was a countdown leading to the actual event on the 18th of December. The pop-up entertained brands such as Vivendii Soho yacht club Roman god  Mowalola amongst other 5 brands that showed up. After the pop-up, Lagos was the next bus stop for the actual convention.

Last year’s edition of Street Souk was held at Harbour Point in Lagos. Emerging streetwear brands the likes of Cruise Gang were paired with booming brands Vivendii, Ashluxe and Roman God, to showcase their latest offerings. Brands like Mowalola, and homegrown cult streetwear brands like WAF, PITH,  making individual cases for the beauty of African streetwear