Inside Nigeria's Booming Streetwear Renaissance
In Nigeria, locally-produced streetwear is gaining more recognition and changing the status quo in a local fashion market currently valued at more than $1 billion. Each December, several young people flock to Lagos – the country’s entertainment capital and a thriving hub for fashion, to be a part of the cultural renaissance taking place across music, fashion, and the arts. This young generation converges at Street Souk, Nigeria’s premiere streetwear convention which boasts a yearly intersection of fashion, style, skate culture and music, and attracts over 5,000 young attendees. With five annual editions to its name, Street Souk has become the country’s singular hub for buying and selling streetwear with a local-made twist.
“Street Souk is important for many reasons,” says Ify Obi, a music and culture editor at Amaka Studio who was a first-time attendee last year. “The primary reason being the sense of pride it allows young Africans to have in wearing African-owned fashion brands and showing budding young designers that they do not have to play into the Western gaze because there is a market for them to succeed in their home.” With a recorded population of 206 million, an estimated 70% of which is aged under 30, Nigeria is evidently a veritable hub for youth culture to thrive and take form.
Formed back in 2018 by 23-year-old Iretidayo Zacchaeus, Street Souk has emerged as a launchpad for championing and representing the deluge of streetwear brands currently on the continent. In the five years since its inception, Street Souk has worked with over three hundred emerging streetwear brands including pioneers such as WAF, Severe Nature, and Vivendii, and rising newcomers such as WWYD, Thirsty Laboratory, Cruise Gang and more. “When I decided to create Street Souk, I saw that there were a lot of emerging brands screen-printing on T-shirts or selling a couple of clothes to their friends. But I realized there was so much more than what this could be,” Zacchaeus shares. “I had the platform and connections to different people and brands that I thought to bring everyone together in one place.”
The first iteration in 2018 was created as a response to the lack of dedicated spaces in Nigeria for streetwear brands to showcase their locally-sourced and produced products. “Skate culture in Africa is very prominent. I feel like everywhere in the world, it really birthed the streetwear community. The skaters have always supported the streetwear community, it goes hand in hand. That’s why at Street Souk, we have a skate rink, cause we know how important skate culture is to streetwear,” shares Zacchaeus, whose convention has grown at a time where streetwear has heavily influenced the mainstream. In 2020, Zacchaeus collaborated with the late streetwear legend Virgil Abloh to create a limited edition shirt with the words “Support Nigerian Women” boldly inscribed on its front.
Now, there is a growing mood and pride that homemade or locally-sourced brands are superior quality because of the dedication to craft and detail from these emerging brands and their founders. “I think just a lot of people are believing in the vision and understanding that what is coming out of Africa right now is really dope,” shares Zacchaeus. This local-centric focus from new buyers is also due in large part to the embrace of the streetwear community by mainstream Nigerian Pop acts such as Davido and Burna Boy. Zacchaeus shares that one artist has the ability to influence a number of young people, allowing streetwear brands to reach more niche audiences. “We know that music is the most influential thing in the whole of Africa, not just Nigeria. So having the artists really support since day one and come for the shows with their fans, it created an environment where people would rather wear African streetwear brands than Western ones which are less accessible.”
Street Souk’s emergence in Nigeria today is due in large part to the groundwork laid down by WAF (previously known as WafflesNCream), one of the first-ever streetwear brands to enter the country back in 2012. The brainchild of Jomi Marcus-Bello and his group of close-knit creative friends around the world, WAF is Nigeria’s first-ever streetwear retailer and skate-shop. “I just wanted to create something that was our own because I didn’t think there was anyone telling our stories and representing us. It was basically out of necessity and I knew we hadn’t told our stories and I was curious to find out how that looked like along skateboarding for a West African kid or brand for them to stand out when in metropolitan cities,” he shares with Highsnobiety. “I wanted to form my own tribe. We have a lot of big heroes in music and film that are not celebrated and I think it’s very important to document their story and also introduce them to a new generation.” Through its inquiry into the young Nigerian experience, WAF has brought many past legends to the forefront, including singer/songwriter and activist Charly Boy and artist Jimi Solanke – who have featured on the brand’s vibrant designs and formed the crux of their vehicle for meaningful storytelling.
One quick glance at WAF’s Instagram profile or website and you’ll easily glean that the brand is an outward manifestation of what it means to be Nigerian in today’s world. While the essence of WAF is about being authentic and non-comforming, Jomi says that there’s no one consumer in mind during the entire creative process. “I am trying to cater to all people; everybody in the walks of life. I don’t really have one person I cater to because you can find within our stories, different ages,” he shares. “Sometimes when we make our products, it’s almost a direct reaction to what’s needed within the community. For example, during rainy season, not that many people have raincoats, so we made some for our community. We do things out of necessity.”
Social media has also played a pivotal role in the rise of streetwear in Nigeria. Through pockets of decentralized communities and groups, young creative kids are taking matters into their hands, and bypassing industry gatekeepers to get their product directly in front of their target audience. One of such brands is PITH Africa, a sustainable brand run by three close friends and colleagues; Cosmas Ojemen, Adedayo Laketu, and Nez Anazodo. Founded in 2017, the unisex brand was created with an aim to provide young Nigerians with a one-stop shop for all their sartorial needs: “One of the things that brought us together was the idea of creating a brand that young people gravitate to; and is just something that is our own,” shares Laketu, one of the brand’s co-founders. At the time, Laketu and his friends purveyed the fashion market and discovered that Western brands were hardly catering to consumers from Nigeria. Instead, these brands were more focused on their target markets in the West, before being handed down in worse conditions to developing countries like Nigeria. “PITH was born out of that idea; to create a brand we could relate to, that we found cool and that was sustainable.”
Taking lessons from other streetwear markets, PITH first began as a decentralized community of like-minded thinkers connecting on the streets of Lagos before growing into its current standing of 7K followers on Instagram. According to Laketu, establishing a connection with the brand’s growing community is of utmost importance as they scale up their operations. “We don’t call ourselves a streetwear brand per say, but we say we like to play on the ethos of streetwear brands – which is community and drop-releases for collections,” he shares. “Community is a big part of us. When we started PITH, it was one of the few times in my life where I felt part of something and we wanted to amplify that. We kind of touched on different communities because of our diverse group of friends: we had a lot of music friends which fit in our music communities, and together, we have a lot of friends that are queer. In a country where it is not legal, it was only right to use our brand to create a safe space for our community.”
This “no leaders” approach also resonates with WAF which is a living breathing community of creative minds–they have no central leader. “I wouldn’t say I created a community but I found people with common ground who love to create together,” says Jomi about the group’s anti-establishment ethos. “It’s gone from one skater after another skater then we started growing. Now, I won’t say it’s out of control but I don’t know anybody anymore. It’s hard especially with COVID, it made a lot more people try new things and find community; there are loads of people now, it’s ridiculous. We are definitely a scene now and we just want to grow it and grow it.”
In today’s increasingly globalized world, young shoppers are looking to clothes to communicate their beliefs and values, and there’s an opportunity for emerging labels to create rich brand stories that combine products with lifestyle projects that invite these consumers into their world. For example, WAF is currently building Nigeria’s first-ever skate park in collaboration with Freedom Park in Ghana and the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network. The skate park is a labor of love from WAF who has spent the past decade proving solutions, and reacting to challenges in Nigeria’s creative scene. WAF, like many other brands of its ilk, utilizes its connection to its customers as currency in a form of culture marketing that prioritizes and puts people first. “This is the last thing we are asking for and the last thing we need to kind of like start our journey really. Everyone is really excited, quite optimistic.” says Jomi.
Despite these future developments, key players such as Zacchaeus believe that the work back home is far from finished. With the eyes of the global fashion industry tuned in and new and emerging stakeholders popping up on the continent, there is a growing tide of elation about Nigerian streetwear’s inevitable future. “For me to keep knowing that the people coming to the Souks are getting younger or we’re still attracting a young generation, that shows me that I have a longer lifeline. In five to ten years, many of these young people will still enjoy and be interested in the same things as streetwear. It allows me the opportunity to get new audiences, grow with the audience and see what they like.”
Zacchaeaus occupies a revolutionary space in the male-dominated streetwear world. While this space has become more gender-inclusive over the years, Zacchaeus was one of the first to champion women-in-streetwear when she launched Street Souk in 2018. Street Souk’s success today is one of the best things a brand can ask for: it’s a community, a movement, and, of course, really cool clothes. Today, Street Souk has now extended its reach to other markets including Ghana (where it held its first-ever event with Ghanaian streetwear brand Free The Youth) and London, where Zacchaeus collaborated with Kick Game UK to sell exclusive merch and exciting African brands like Daily Paper and Motherlan.
Collaboration is uniting local streetwear brands in Nigeria with their Western counterparts like never before. Recently, PITH has partnered with local alcohol dispensary Quacktails for limited-edition merch and an accompanying zine, Street Souk collaborated with Nike to release its five-year anniversary collection and Motherlan released a T-shirt collection with Awake. Indeed, the style of Lagos reflects a wider shift happening in the world right now, where personal style, rather than the latest trend cycle, is of utmost importance. Nowadays, these brands are showing that there are no rules and streetwear is all the better for it.
