August 11, 2025 |
New to the London cohort of concept stores, subversive Caribbean designer Jawara Alleyne has just opened 7.5, a carefully curated, appointment-only retail space in Bethnal Green. Unmarked and quietly tucked away on streets that, as Alleyne points out, “weren’t bombed in the Blitz,” the building feels almost frozen in time – the kind of place you stumble across and instantly wonder what’s happening inside.
To find out, you’ll need to DM Alleyne directly (@jawaraalleyne) and book an appointment. “You can’t just walk in; you need to announce your entry,” he says. “That also ensures whoever is there to welcome you is aware of your arrival and can plan for it.” This isn’t a shop in the usual sense, but “a revolving platform for interdisciplinary experiments,” as a release describes it – a space that mutates constantly, shaped by whatever’s happening that day. “Even if you came here the night before, you’d find it changed again by the next morning.”
The name 7.5 folds together personal mythology and a bit of a game. Seven is Alleyne’s birthdate, a number that “has followed me around a lot in life – so much so that I genuinely feel there’s some charm in being born on that date.” The door to the space has no number; its neighbour is marked with a large seven. “Since my door didn’t have a number, I decided to call it 7(.5), because you’ll find 7 to locate the area, but it’s actually the ‘.5’ you’re going to. There’s something inherently magical about a door with no number – it’s a bit Platform 9¾.”
That sense of discovery runs through the interiors and the way the space functions. One influence was Sarah Lucas and Tracey Emin’s The Shop. During Covid, when Alleyne turned his room into a shop during lockdown, it informed his way of taking agency over how his work meets the world. 7.5 is the same. “It’s incredibly important to have personal authorship over your story, as opposed to just being on a shop floor next to a hundred other names,” says Alleyne.
From his Caymanian and Jamaican upbringing comes another thread: Tropical Modernism and the elegance of Caribbean spaces, where nature is considered part of the architecture. Just as formative were unfinished buildings – “spaces that never reach a final conclusion – something always in flux, open to possibility.” He remembers his older cousins turning an unfinished living room into a community cinema for a night. “There was so much magic that night in how they transformed it.”
7.5 works in the same way, with a stocklist that will “always be changing and updating constantly” and a permanent home for Alleyne’s Untitled collection, where the tactility and movement of the pieces can be experienced in person. “Everything you get nowadays looks like it’s coming out of the same factories – even when it’s not. This is my way of plugging that hole in the market.”
Its first chapter is a charity collaboration with London-based artist Alvaro Barrington, whose Carnival-centred practice echoes Alleyne’s own cultural storytelling. They met when a member of Barrington’s studio contacted Alleyne about a collection in aid of Notting Hill Carnival, featuring prints from Barrington, Peter Doig, Rachel Jones and Denzil Forrester, with all proceeds to the Carnival Village Trust. Alleyne had previously worked on Barrington’s Tate exhibition; Barrington, in turn, has helped with fittings for 7.5. “It felt like a natural and organic partnership from the outset – and it’s grown in an incredibly organic way. I think we really see and appreciate each other and just want to see the other win.”
Photography courtesy of Jawara Alleyne.
