The Lens, May 2026
Hand-embellishment in Lagos, the politics of a knit, and why we still keep the door open at the studio.
May. The first thing this issue points at is Lisa Folawiyo, twenty-one years after the studio's first hand-stitched Ankara dress walked. The work has only become more itself in that time — more architectural, more thread-by-thread legible. Read Tola Adesanya's profile, then look closely at the cocktail dress on our cover. The paillettes are set by hand. Counted, then placed. None of this is print.
Elsewhere we look south to MaXhosa, where Laduma Ngxokolo has been turning Xhosa beadwork patterns into knit for the better part of fifteen years. The thesis project that started it has aged into a brand the size of a small institution; what hasn't changed is the question underneath it — what does it mean to translate a pattern that was originally a code? We don't entirely answer that, but we sit with it for nine hundred words.
Then there are dispatches. Ashluxe's vintage acid-wash drop is the most-Lagos thing we've seen since the last most-Lagos thing — denim that looks like it spent an afternoon under the harmattan. And in the events column, Christie Brown is opening the atelier in Cantonments for one resort show on May 22, and the Threads of Nok exhibition begins at Tafawa Balewa Square in June.
A reminder of what this site is and isn't. We don't take a margin on what you buy. Every link from a piece on noklens ends at the maker's own shop. We curate; the studios sell. If something here makes you want a thing, the money should travel as directly as the desire.
See you in June.
Correction, 14 October 2026: an earlier version of this letter said Lagos Fashion Week's dates were official and gave them as 22 to 26 October. The dates had not been announced. The organisers later set them as 28 October to 1 November 2026.