The designer Jawara Alleyne, who is based in London and was born in Jamaica, received an incredible endorsement a few weeks ago: “This is by Jawara Alleyne, who’s my new favorite designer because I’m struggling with tops,” Rihanna said in response to Interview editor-in-chief Mel Ottenberg’s question about her outfit on the occasion of her April cover shoot for the magazine. Alleyne has long been a main feature on Barbadian megastars’ boards of inspiration.
“It’s the honor of the century,” Only a few days after the publication of the Interview story, Alleyne tells me. Alleyne never imagined that, after seeing pictures of Rihanna sporting his disassembled and safety-pin-adorned clothes in the months before, she would really call him out by name. “When I was growing up, I would always look to her as a source of inspiration, because she comes from a place that looks like the place I came from, and her story is not dissimilar to mine.”
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Alleyne was born in Jamaica, and at the age of twelve, his family relocated to the Cayman Islands. Although he had always had an interest in fashion, his passion for design really took off when he was a teenager. Through a local fashion program, Alleyne organized his first runway presentation at the age of sixteen. He then proceeded to create his own collections at home.
However, his dream was to go to Europe and follow in the footsteps of fashion icons like Karl Lagerfeld, Martin Margiela, and Alber Elbaz of Lanvin. When he was a teenager, he competed in fashion shows where the themes were design problems rooted in the community. Alleyne at the time believed it inhibited his creativity and wanted to create “really glorious fashion.”
After finishing a business education program in the Cayman Islands, the designer finally moved out of his parent’s house at the age of 19, attending the London College of Fashion in the United Kingdom. He obtained an internship at Peter Pilotto during his second year there, and after graduating, he worked there for a few years while doing an MA in menswear at Central Saint Martins. Alleyne cites his job at Peter Pilotto’s company, where he was put, for giving him a thorough grasp of the business, production, marketing, and design aspects of a brand. “You can have really great ideas, but unless you find a good way to manage your process, the creativity, and the commerce, then your brand is never really going to last too long,” he stated. “But when you’re starting out, you don’t really have the capacity to do that. You’re doing everything yourself.”Alleyne’s design philosophy is largely influenced by the COVID-19 epidemic. After receiving some media attention for his graduation collection, he began working on his first full collection as a solo designer in the spring of 2020, following his graduation from Central Saint Martins. Alleyne, however, was deprived of the same resources, collaborators, and studio spaces he had utilized throughout his time in school due to the shutdowns. So he took a do-it-yourself method, which reminded him of his days as a scrappy young designer.
“I think Covid was a blessing in disguise,” he stated. “It forced me to really rely on what actually came to me, instead of trying to prove that I know how to do fashion in the way that I thought it needed to be done.” He remembers his opening line, “I just got a bunch of old T-shirts that I had lying around, some jeans, trousers, and stuff from the charity shop. And I went to Nigeria with a suitcase, scissors, and safety pins, and I just made the collection in the hotel room.”
Since then, Alleyne has been gradually but firmly establishing a reputation centered around, in his words, “the honesty of being able to create when you have access to nothing.” At the moment, he sells directly to consumers through a few specialized retailers like Machine-A and APOCI. The Jawara Alleyne website now features a rainbow-hued beaded necklace, a black-and-white striped painted button-down, an ombré knit maxi skirt, and made-to-order shirts similar to those Rihanna has worn. Though Alleyne has been in the background, his London Fashion Week presentation of his Fall 2024 collection was a turning moment.
Alleyne’s presentation, which was performed within the chapel of St. Mary le Strand church in London’s Holborn area, focused on the people and landscapes of his second home in the Cayman Islands following a yearly storm that strikes the Caribbean in the autumn. Alleyne created the impression of objects being flung around by violent rain and wind with the collection’s twisted cutout tops and draped and folded skirts. The exquisitely disorganized clothing appeared as though it had been plucked from the floor or ripped from shattered drawers and draped over people seeking refuge. “I wanted to think about a time when that feeling of coziness and community actually comes into play within a Caribbean story. And that feeling of a need for protection, for layering up.”
He further mentioned, “It’s also about the importance of circularity within the Caribbean mindset. When I was growing up, living in a place where you have a hurricane every year that comes and basically destroys the whole island, it gives you a different point of view when it comes to materialism. Nothing ever gets wasted, and things are always being put back into a cycle.”
He is putting a lot of effort into the brand overall as well as his next collection. In the upcoming months, he will be concentrating on wholesaling and growing his staff. Alleyne will be back at London Fashion Week in the autumn, and in November he will be performing in the Cayman Islands to commemorate the opening of his art exhibition at the National Gallery of the Cayman Islands.
He claims that his goal is to carry on developing the tale from the autumn show and to establish a label that is driven by humanity, storytelling, and skill and that captures the strong, independent spirit of his hometown.
Alleyne stated, “There’s a rebellious energy and nature that exists within the islands.” He perceives Rihanna to have a similar vibe since she has always served as an inspiration to him. “She is sort of the muse,” he remarked.
He concluded, “It’s about a woman who carries herself with confidence, a confidence that goes beyond what you look like. It’s pulling from punk, but then it’s something different.”
