The quarantine has really put a damper on all the phantasmagorical plans media companies had to ring out the decade. Offline festivals have gone virtual or shuttered till 2021, lofty ideas have been restructured to reflect our current stilted reality. But the one place where magazines are still working a madness is in print issues. Print remains the last bastion of artifice, the last thing in a publisher’s arsenal that can inspire awe and fascination. And the new NativeMag print issues does this in spades. Mere days after Kanye West announced that Mowalola Ogunlesi, polymath and head designer of Mowalola was the first designer in residence for his new YZY collaboration with international clothing giant GAP, NativeMag announced Mowalola was their cover star for their time Issue, her interview deviating from their usual style of immersive profiling to feature a whimsical conversation between Mowalola and friend and fellow collaborator, Odunsi The Engine.
Mowalola is one of two cover stars on the new issue, the other being the perennial music industry bad boy, Naira Marley. Like Ogunlesi, Marley’s rise to the top of the music industry has been fraught with controversy, from stints in jail, accusations of grand larceny, drug use, disrespect to constituted authority and a rabid fanbase of marlians that terrify conservative Nigerian parents so throroughly people offer prayer sessions to deliver teenagers from the ‘Marlian spirit’. Talk about a divisive icon.
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