fantasy ikoyi by tayo okoya turns community into creative infrastructure
Not quite a club. Not simply a store. Not exactly a gallery. Tayo Okoya’s Fantasy Ikoyi is defining something Lagos creatives have always needed more of: somewhere to simply exist together.
By Asteroid Media
Lagos has no shortage of places to spend money.
There are restaurants, clubs, galleries, cafés and enough December parties to make sleep feel irresponsible. But spaces where creatives can meet without the pressure of a formal exhibition, concert or nightclub table are still comparatively rare.
Enter Fantasy Ikoyi.
Located at 47 Ademola Street in Ikoyi, the new creative community space is positioned as a members’ club with booking and membership infrastructure, while its wider identity has been described as a new Lagos “third space”: somewhere between home and work where culture can happen organically.
And to understand why Tayo Okoya would build something like Fantasy, you have to go backwards.
Before Fantasy, There Was Black Fantasy
Okoya’s creative story began long before the space.
He conceived Black Fantasy while still in JSS3, drawing clothes during prep before later studying animation, interactive technology, video graphics and special effects at SAE Institute Dubai. What became World Black Fantasy, or WBF, eventually grew into a streetwear and cultural brand with activations across Lagos, Dubai and London.
But Okoya has repeatedly described WBF as something larger than clothing.
“We’re trying to build a movement,” he told New Wave Magazine in 2025, explaining that the project was intended to represent Black expression across fashion, campaigns and experiences.
That makes Fantasy Ikoyi feel less like an unexpected pivot and more like the physical evolution of an idea he has been building for years.
In 2024, Okoya described WBF’s first Nigerian flagship as a “community store”, created with eight artists and designed to represent pop culture rather than operate as a conventional retail shop. He personally spent four months developing the space, obsessing over details from its ambience to its smell. His philosophy was straightforward: “With everything you’re building, community is key.”
Fantasy takes that philosophy and removes the clothing rack from the centre.
So, What Exactly Is Fantasy?
Maybe the better question is: what can it become?
Fantasy sits somewhere between creative clubhouse, cultural venue, members’ space and nightlife destination. Its digital infrastructure includes memberships, bookings and even a 3D tour, suggesting a space designed not merely to be visited but programmed and inhabited.
Its recent programming already hints at that flexibility.
In August Fantasy Ikoyi was home to events like Soul and Sip, an intimate R&B party built around music, conversation and connection, took over 47 Ademola Street from 8 p.m. until 3 a.m, also another event called “nothing”, where creatives could just come chill, connect, and do “nothing” as the name implies, then several art exhibitions and listening parties took place as well.
These kind of events are significant because Fantasy does not need to become another giant Lagos event centre. Its real power may lie in smaller collisions: DJs meeting designers, photographers meeting musicians, fashion labels hosting pop-ups, people arriving for a party and leaving with somebody they want to create with.
Lagos Needs Places Between Places
Okoya has spoken openly about how hostile Lagos can sometimes feel to young creatives. He remembers being laughed at when he once tried to organise a pop-up, and has described building community support as one of the hardest parts of developing a creative business in Nigeria.
That history makes Fantasy more interesting.
Because creative industries do not survive on talent alone.
They need infrastructure.
Not only studios and galleries, but rooms where people meet before the collaboration has a name. Places where scenes form, ideas cross-pollinate and communities see each other repeatedly enough to become communities at all.
For a city currently exporting its music, fashion, art and nightlife across the planet, Lagos needs more physical spaces belonging to the people producing that culture.
Fantasy Ikoyi is still young. Its impact will ultimately depend on who gets to use it, what happens inside it and whether the community Okoya talks about genuinely makes the space its own.
But the intention is compelling.
World Black Fantasy began with a teenager imagining clothes during prep.
Years later, the fantasy has acquired an address.
And perhaps what Lagos creatives need next is exactly that: somewhere their ideas can meet in real life.