Aliyah’s Interlude on Personal Style, TikTok Strategy and #AliyahCore

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“I’m sorry, I hope you’re not disappointed with my outfit today,” Aliyah Bah tells me when our Zoom call connects. “I didn’t bring too many clothes with me here!”
For almost anyone else, getting glammed up for a Friday afternoon interview might not warrant an apology. But for the 21-year-old Georgia native, fashion has never been merely incidental – it has become a metonym for her brand.
Over the last few years, for anyone in possession of a TikTok account, it has been impossible to escape the mesmerising sartorial world of #AliyahCore. It started during the 2020 Covid lockdown, when Bah was in her freshman year at Georgia State University. Living at home and taking classes online, she started documenting her outfits on TikTok under the soubriquet Aliyah’s Interlude, inviting viewers to get ready with her, and showing off her addictive personality.
The content was fresh and, crucially, the fits were fire – each video brought a new maximalist, pink look inspired by Harajuku and Y2K culture, replete with earmuffs, furry boots, bikini tops, miniskirts, leg warmers and fishnets. Since then, her star has grown exponentially, with a barnstorming foray into the music industry led by her viral 2023 single *IT GIRL*, and her latest hit *Moodboard*.

When Bah calls me from a family gathering in Maryland, while her look is markedly more understated, the yellow Harajuku-style beanie and pink hoodie she is sporting still betray a hint of her signature style. Unsurprising, since, while #AliyahCore might seem made-for-TikTok, its genesis was entirely organic.

“While I was growing up, my parents owned a recycling business, like this thrift store where I would get all my clothes,” Bah says. “My mum was always against me buying [new] clothes, so I thrifted from there. But they wouldn't be clothes that kids my age were wearing, it was older stuff that you really had to upcycle and make personal for it to look nice.

aliyahs interlude polyester zine pop star tiktok aliyahcore fashion culture star music brat — **Dress - Namilia | Star necklace - Heaven Sent | Necklace - Sterling Forever | Rings - Sterling Forever | Earrings - Sterling Forever**

“So I think that's kind of how I built my personal style, just by kind of working with nothing and then trying to make it look cute,” she continues. “Also, I was online a lot as a kid, watching Avril Lavigne, Beyonce, Rihanna – just that type of like, miniskirt energy… I used to love all of that shit.”

While Bah’s fashion might not have been contrived, her TikTok strategy was certainly purposeful. The now 2.8 million followers she has accumulated on the platform, and the recognition she has since received from celebrities including Lizzo, Doja Cat and SZA, were not a happy accident. At 21, she is part of a generation preternaturally adept at gaming social media’s sphinxlike algorithms.

“Also, I was online a lot as a kid, watching Avril Lavigne, Beyonce, Rihanna – just that type of like, miniskirt energy… I used to love all of that shit.”

“I really put in that work, I figured out the formula for that shit because I understood how the app works,” Bah says, with impressive insouciance. “When I tell you I was posting like up to six times a day when I first started.”

As well as her “FaceTime Call Get Ready With Me” videos, Bah’s most popular TikToks were the ones where she was just chatting to the camera, waxing lyrical about her outfits or hyping up her viewers.

“I was finding all these trending audios,” she says. “It took me like a full year to really start getting viral video after viral video. But at the beginning I was like, ‘damn do I even really want to do this shit, because I'm not seeing no results’. Thank God I had nothing to do in the house during the pandemic.”

**Dress: Tyler McGillivary | Shoes: Willa Phoenix | Earrings: Atra Nova By Sheila B | Bracelets: Sterling Forever**

“It's so fucked up that people can't live in their truth just because of somebody else’s bigoted opinions, like y'all need to grow the fuck up honestly.”

It was last year that Bah’s aesthetic really began to move beyond the woman herself, and beyond her community of online viewers. In the space of a couple of years, Bah has skyrocketed from college student to influencer — now just as likely to be seen sitting at fashion shows or on a PR invite to Coachella than in her bedroom on TikTok. In October 2023, Doja Cat flew her to LA to appear in her Agora Hills music video – “she was cool as fuck!” Bah quips.

“I was eating it up to be honest, I was loving all of it,” Bah laughs. “I came from a small-ass town – I feel like nobody from my town has ever experienced this shit. I felt real cool, like I was really putting on for girls everywhere.”

It is certainly a far cry from her childhood. Her parents moved from Sierra Leone to Fayetteville, Georgia shortly before she was born, a city she describes as “backwards” – “imagine Atlanta but twenty years ago!”. Not, then, an ideal place for an alternative Black, pansexual girl to experiment with her style.

“I did get a lot of mean comments and bullying [at school], but I feel like after a certain point when they realised that I'm not gonna change, they kind of backed off a little bit,” she says. “They were just like, ‘oh this is just a girl who comes to school dressed up everyday, period.’”

Despite growing up in a conservative Muslim household, Bah has been remarkably vocal about LGTBQ+ issues, and her own sexuality, which she sees as one of the defining issues of the upcoming US election. “I feel like my entire life I've always been a black sheep…I didn't really fit into any community,” she says. “It's so fucked up that people can't live in their truth just because of somebody else’s bigoted opinions, like y'all need to grow the fuck up honestly. And we need to elect Kamala, period! If Trump comes into office, this is gonna get so much worse.”

Bah also says offhand that, due to their religious beliefs, her parents didn’t allow her to listen to the radio growing up. “The only thing we could ever listen to was like – what's that shit called? – those kids’ CDs from Wendy’s that they used to put in the Happy Meals,” she laughs. “It was like always Michael Jackson and like Beyonce, that's the only shit they would ever let us listen to because they were like, ‘we don't want y'all listening to profanity!’”

It is somewhat surprising, then, that Bah has, in the last year, ventured into that very industry – and with staggering success. “Bitch — you know I’m sexy / (Ugh) Don’t call, just text me,” opens her breakout viral TikTok hit IT GIRL, released in October last year. Crafted from an Azealia Banks–esque beat Bah found on YouTube by producer LxnleyBeat, it is the sonic version of #AliyahCore – oozing self-confidence, a well-deserved paean of praise to herself.

“It was honestly just some fucking around shit, I'm not even gonna lie,” she laughs when I ask her how the song came about. “I used to find beats on YouTube and I was like, ‘let me get into my rapper bag’”. Unlike her fashion videos, IT GIRL was an instant online hit. “I swear to God,” she says. “I posted it [on TikTok] went to sleep and I woke up and it had like 600,000 views.”

Though her initial video teasing the song attracted some comments telling her to stick to fashion, the track did the talking for her, racking up a million streams in five days. She went on to release a second single Fashion Icon three months later, and has since joined SZA onstage in Sydney to perform IT GIRL in front of 20,000 fans in April, and opened for Charli XCX on her Brat tour Chicago, substituting her signature pink for a lime-green tee.

“I swear to God, I posted it [on TikTok] went to sleep and I woke up and it had like 600,000 views.”

“[Opening for Charli] was iconic as fuck, before I even went there Brat was on repeat – I love that fucking album,” Bah says. “She's so fucking British. She came in with her sunglasses, like, she was cunt, I really love her.”

Bah’s latest single Moodboard, released this month, is a continuation of the IDGAF attitude which has characterised her career so far. “I'm a mood board, bitch / You got style when you got rich / I was down and still that bitch,” she raps.

But being the IT GIRL comes with downsides, especially at such a young age. In the last month, Chappell Roan has attracted controversy for a series of TikToks in which she expressed exasperation at feeling "harassed" by fans, her family being "stalked", bullied online and being yelled at from car windows.

“I definitely understand her, because I feel like once I start to get attention online, people don't respect you as a person, they see you as a concept,” Bah muses. “I felt overwhelmed at some points…[and] had to get used to people not giving a fuck about my personal boundaries once I started to get more fame and clout. I make a lot of talking and personality videos, so people feel like they know me. They don't understand that, like, you don't know me from anywhere.”

So, what is next for Bah? With a debut acting venture this month in Hulu’s new comedy English Teacher, an EP and a clothing line in the works, she is already defying definition as a multi-hyphenate. When I ask if there’s a discipline she wants to focus on, she demurs.

“I think art in general is my main passion,” she eventually decides. “The fashion, the music, the shoots that I've done – it’s all been my creative direction. I'm an artist before any of the genres. I'm open to trying anything."

Aliyah’s Interlude on Personal Style, TikTok Strategy and #AliyahCore

“Also, I was online a lot as a kid, watching Avril Lavigne, Beyonce, Rihanna – just that type of like, miniskirt energy… I used to love all of that shit.”

“It's so fucked up that people can't live in their truth just because of somebody else’s bigoted opinions, like y'all need to grow the fuck up honestly.”

“I swear to God, I posted it [on TikTok] went to sleep and I woke up and it had like 600,000 views.”

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