For Aliyah Bah it always starts with a miniskirt. Then she throws on earmuffs – always earmuffs. In fact, the 20-year-old former college student (and TikTok phenom turned model) came to our interview via Zoom with pink star-shaped earmuffs sticking out of her chocolate brown hair, despite the temperature in Atlanta, where she lives, hovering above 80 degrees.
“Every time it’s always something that involves a kind of Y2K type of look,” Ms. Bah said. “Then I go in with the accessories, which I’d say are the fishnet, the garter, the belts, the earmuffs — and fur.” The earmuffs help Ms. Bah “feel grounded when she’s overstimulated,” which she often does, she said.
The look, now known on the internet as “Aliyacore”, is unique. In addition to earmuffs and a miniskirt (or really short shorts), ensembles usually include crop tops, fishnet stockings over one leg and both arms, knee-high platform moon boots trimmed with fur, a garter belt, makeup that matches the shade of the outfit, and a whole lot of hair accessories.
Not easy to categorize, Ms Bah’s style has tones of anime, harajuku, Y2K and alternative. And it resonates with an audience of over three million followers on her social media accounts. Her outfits may be a big draw for viewers, but it’s her personality and openness that might just be the temptation.
Ms. Bah began documenting her outfits in 2020, during her freshman year at Georgia State University, while living at home when classes moved online due to the pandemic. She posted a series of videos on Aliyahsinterlude, her TikTok account, inviting viewers to prepare with her – her contribution to a genre known as “GRWM” videos online.
“The videos were like a visual diary for me,” she said.
The aesthetic started to catch on and has now spread beyond its viewers. Lizzo, who won the Grammy for record of the year in February, recently posted a video to her Instagram account of her dressed head-to-toe in Aliyahcore: red moon boots topped with white fur, a white garter belt, jean shorts and – crop top set and pink furry headphones.
“Love you @AliyahsInterlude,” Lizzo captioned the post. Though Ms. Bah has skyrocketed from college student to influencer — appearing at fashion shows and being invited to Coachella — she finds deeper purpose in the popularity of her style.
“Being black is, of course, what people see when I’m wearing something,” Ms. Bah said, referring to how her style subverts expectations of how black women should dress. “Seeing a lot of dark skinned girls dressed in Aliyahcore makes me really happy because I never saw it when I was growing up. I think that’s great because for the longest time ever we’ve never really been given the space to be alternative just because it was always seen as something white people did.
Anyer Akot, 20, who met Ms. Bah on the Georgia State campus two years ago, has witnessed her colleagues’ reaction to Ms. Bah’s outfits go from shock to awe.
“Now when you go out and you’re dressed that way, people are super accepting,” Ms Akot said. “They come to you like, ‘I love those boots, you look so cute, your outfit looks so good, it’s like a doll.’ It’s just amazing to see how Aliyahcore has really brought alternative fashion into the spotlight, especially for black women. We don’t really see black girls dressing like that. But now it’s actually normal. We’ve normalized it.”
Ms. Bah has been working on her own style since she was in primary school. “I used to make bows for my classmates,” she said. “I would sell them at school and I would decorate people’s notebooks.”
When she got her first job at McDonald’s at age 15, she began shopping at thrift stores, enjoying finding pieces that weren’t mass-produced and styling them herself. When she was bullied in high school, she discovered that her clothes could be her armor.
Her mother, Zainab Kadie Bah, 55, often told her creative daughter not to worry about what other people thought of her.
Ms. Bah said her daughter was concerned at the time. “I said, ‘Be patient. Everything will be fine,'” Ms. Bah said from her home in Fayette County, Georgia. “But I was always with her at school to make sure I defended her.”
Aliyah Bah’s cousin Amanda Diallo, 21, who dresses in Aliyahcore, recalled how strong Ms Bah was when she was bullied “for anything and everything”. but most of all she remembered how classy her cousin has always been, and she’s not surprised how her style caught on.
“When you wear Aliyahcore, everyone outside, even in Maryland where I live, when I wear, they say, ‘Oh my God, it’s like Aliyahcore,'” Ms. Diallo said. “Aliyahcore is something she made up, but it’s something you could come up with too. You can add your own style while wearing Aliyahcore.”
That’s also what one of her followers, Symphoni Bordenave, 20, likes about the aesthetic.
“Her style kind of matched mine and that’s why I was interested,” says Ms. Bordenave, a Santa Monica College student who has been dressing in Aliyahcore for almost a year. “It’s so expressive and so creative and unique, and that captivated me. You can integrate all colors and patterns with Aliyahcore, it’s more like a wide range of different ideas and styles.”
Bringing all those styles together requires an understanding of the fashion trends that came before Gen Z and a confidence and self-awareness that can turn those trends into a new style.
“I feel like we’re trying to mix everything up,” Ms Bordenave said. “I take the best parts of each era and put them all into one. You have the Y2K, and then you have the ’70s or late ’60s with the longer skirts or even as a very, very short skirt. Then the 90s with the really oversized shoes, the big bags, things like that.
The mother of Mrs. Bah grew up in Sierra Leone and runs a clothing recycling business in Atlanta that buys clothing from non-profit organizations and sells it abroad. She doesn’t always agree with her daughter’s fashion choices, she said.
She usually stays away from social media, but often wondered what Aliyah was up to and why she took so many pictures of herself.
“There’s a huge difference between what I was doing at her age and what she’s doing now,” Ms Bah said of her daughter. “In the beginning I found it difficult to accept. Now I realize this is something she really wants to do. So I have no choice. I just have to support her.”
Aliyah Bah remembered the reactions of people in her rural village as she passed their farms.
“They didn’t care,” Mrs. Bah said of her immediate neighbors. “But if I went out in the province, I would definitely get a lot of attention. People look at you like that, but I think that’s just a Georgia thing or something down South, because even though I live in the city now, I still get stares all the time.
Mrs. Bah is used to being the center of attention. Earlier this month, she walked the runway at the Dominnico Spring 2023 fashion show after criticizing the brand for styling the models in their fall show in Aliyahcore-esque looks. “They could have just asked me to be a model,” Mrs. Bah tweeted at Dominnico, a Barcelona brand founded by Domingo Rodríguez Lázaro in 2016. The brand slipped into her DMs and she walked in the show soon after.
“We really thought it would be a great idea to have her on the show because honestly, after seeing her personality and style in general, it was like, yeah, of course!” said Aleix Moyano, the director of graphic design at Dominnico. “She literally embodied the fierceness in the look and felt super sexy and confident. That is what the brand is essentially about.” He added that it didn’t matter who had the aesthetic concept first; what’s important is that Aliyahcore is now aligned with the brand.
In March, Ms. Bah was featured in Galore magazine in red with white moon boots and an ostrich leather bikini.
She’s also been contacted by Grammy winner Kali Uchis, she said, who wants her to model her brand, and is teaming up with rapper Rico Nasty to style a few looks for her.
But Ms. Bah sees more room for Aliyahcore to grow and has a clear vision for the future.
“I see it evolving into a more body-positive movement,” says Ms. Bah, who wants to help her followers gain confidence in their bodies no matter what they look like. “I want Aliyahcore to evolve to where I can wear earmuffs and wear a high fashion dress and it would still be super cute and camping more into a lifestyle rather than just a fashion statement.”