A correspondence from Iseyin.

On the looms of Atelier Adunni, the harmattan, and the long quiet of weaving.

We visited the looms of Atelier Adunni in the early hours of the morning. The harmattan wind, as it always is in February, was dry and unsparing. The cloth, by contrast, was neither.

Adunni Bakare, who founded the atelier in 2014 off Awolowo Road, spoke quietly as she watched a weaver finish a length of indigo aso oke. There is a rhythm to it that is impossible to hurry, she said. The shuttle moves at the speed it moves. The cloth knows.

The cooperative in Iseyin, where the cloth is loomed, has worked together for nearly two decades. Twelve weavers, three of them now retired, several of them in their twenties. The cloth is finished in Lagos — pressed, bound, cut. Every garment from the house carries, in some form, the hand of every weaver who came before.