Belfast, Northern Ireland. 2023.
StreetRelease started with two friends talking about cars, and what we could do with the amount of time we already spent around them.
We were going to shows, taking photos and travelling around the island. We enjoyed it, but kept coming back to the same conversation: we wanted to get more involved. Meet the people behind the cars, spend time with them and make something of our own along the way.
We had plenty of ideas. Choosing a name took a little longer.
Eventually, we settled on StreetRelease. Looking back now, with everything that’s grown around it, it’s hard to imagine calling it anything else.
At the time, though, we still had to work out what that name would actually stand for. Photography and film gave us somewhere to start. We put the miles in, covered events and arranged shoots, gradually getting to know more of the people who make this scene what it is.
Alongside that, we were starting to explore clothing.
We knew what we liked wearing. Learning how to make something we’d want to wear ourselves was another thing entirely. There was a lot to get our heads around: the fit of a tee, the weight of the fabric, how a graphic sits on it. A design could look right on a screen and still need work once you imagined someone actually wearing it.
We wanted the clothes to hold their own. Something you’d pick up because you liked the piece, whether you’d followed StreetRelease from the start or had never heard of us. The connection to cars would be there—it’s where all of this came from—but we wanted to give it more thought than putting our name on a shirt.
That first year was us finding our feet. Taking photos, working on designs and figuring out how those interests could fit together. We had ambitions for StreetRelease, but we were learning how much work sat between having an idea and actually getting it out there.
Looking back, there’s plenty we’d approach differently now. Our taste has developed, and so has our understanding of what we want to make. But those early attempts helped us get there. You can spend a long time waiting until you know enough to start.
A lot has happened since 2023. These were the first steps.
— SR
