Jawara Alleyne is on a roll. This summer alone, the designer has—deep breath—been nominated for an emerging designer prize at this year’s Fashion Awards, collaborated with the artist Alvaro Barrington on a major commission at the Tate Britain, and delivered a string of custom looks for his growing celebrity fan base that culminated in the latest bespoke piece for Rihanna: a draped chocolate brown silk dress that the singer stepped out in during NYFW. (Back in April, Rihanna declared Alleyne her “new favorite designer” in Interview magazine.) Yet Alleyne is taking it all in his stride. “It’s exciting, but my focus is always on my practice,” he said at a preview. “I just try to keep things on a level, stay grounded, and then it’s not really so daunting.”
Alleyne’s levelheadedness can be, at least in part, chalked up to the fact he’s been in the game for a while now, having spent the best part of a decade as one of London fashion’s greatest secrets. (He first emerged as part of the wave of talent that produced Ib Kamara and Campbell Addy, and kept things ticking over through drops via Nasir Mazhar’s Fantastic Toiles and then an impressive string of collections with Lulu Kennedy’s Fashion East.) What a pleasure it was, then, to see him decide to go out on his own: From his first show two years ago, held in a Whitechapel church, it’s been clear that Alleyne has that special something.
An enthusiastic crowd of Alleyne’s friends and fans—Normani included—filtered into a compact space off the Strand and sat on a mishmash of chairs and sofas scattered around the room, before the lights went up and a foot-tapping soundtrack crafted by music collective Vivendii with a little help from Kamara and Alleyne’s musician brother Tafari came on. The title of the collection, Island Underground, nodded to Alleyne’s upbringing on the Cayman Islands, and the mystical air that hung over the ensuing show—models walked slowly and deliberately, weaving around the pockets of seating, with fabric dragging behind them as if they’d just been rescued from a shipwreck—had an electric energy.
For Alleyne, embarking on his journey as a designer and delving deeper into his Caribbean identity has been therapeutic. While growing up, he resented the limitations of being so far away from the world’s fashion capitals, and he looked to heroes in Paris like Alber Elbaz, Alexander McQueen, and Karl Lagerfeld: “To me, being inspired by the islands felt a little bit restricting,” he said. But his interest in reconciling these two sides of himself has now ended up producing some of his most striking work. “I think there are a lot of brands that are just pulling from culture, and so I think it’s really important for me as a designer to make sure my collections aren’t just inspired by that culture but give back,” he added. (To wit, tonight’s show was presented in partnership with the Cayman Islands ministries of culture and tourism, and Alleyne will be taking the collection to show at their National Gallery in November.)
There was plenty of the meticulousness and craft that saw Alleyne first fall in love with fashion on display too: He’s a fantastic colorist, knotting together kaleidoscopic fabrics into highly desirable dresses and crafting a series of ravishing ombré dyed looks that carried an almost hallucinatory shimmer. There were deliberate touches of the quotidian chucked in the blender as well—nautical stripes, a gray suiting fabric that nodded to the kind of corporate worker you might find in the Caymans, tin instruments that looked as if they’d been dredged up from the lagoon as accessories—then whipped up into entirely new forms that showcased Alleyne’s signature Galliano-with-safety-pins draping technique, and with a few splashes of Westwood-worthy pirate chic thrown in for good measure.
With Akeem Smith on styling duties, these disparate threads were woven together with a puckish wit—tendrils of fabric trailed across the laps of those watching the show as the final model walked, holding a panel of chopped and screwed T-shirts aloft; meanwhile, the collection was inspired by a trio of local legends from the Caymans, including a female bus driver named Anne-Marie with a penchant for wild wigs, that made it feel entirely Alleyne’s own. And as a final series of floor-skimming gowns emerged, it wasn’t the playfulness of Alleyne’s designs that felt like the standout factor here, but their strange elegance. It’s little wonder he’s become a favorite of red-carpet renegades like Charli XCX, Lewis Hamilton, and Blackpink’s Lisa.
It’s exciting to see a designer like Alleyne receive the groundswell of industry support he deserves—the show ended in rapturous applause before Afrobeats began blasting from the speakers, and the space quickly turned into an after-party—but it’s even more exciting to think about where he might head next as he continues to level up. “I want it to communicate the elevation, the growth, the direction, but still keeping that artistic hand there,” he said.
