Aliyah’s Interlude on FABTOPIA, #AliyahCore and Building Her Own Fashion World

Photography by Benzo

Aliyah’s Interlude joins us in downtown Atlanta, where she is, quite literally, getting her hair done and just got her nails pressed. It is an appropriately casual entrance for someone whose public persona has always blurred the line between getting dressed, making content, making music, and simply going about her life. Atlanta is home (for both of us actually - turns out we both went to Georgia State), and even after everything that has happened since she first started posting online, it remains part of the story.

A lot has happened. Her 2023 breakout “IT GIRL” has now crossed 221 million streams on Spotify, while January brought the release of her debut EP, KUNTOLOGY 101. Years earlier, #Aliyahcore had already turned her maximalist personal style into an internet phenomenon, surpassing 400 million TikTok views by late 2023. Along the way came fashion, styling, and pop-culture crossovers, including an appearance in Doja Cat’s “Agora Hills” video, as Aliyah moved increasingly fluidly between the worlds of music and style.

Now, she is coming back to what started it all. On September 1, Aliyah launches FABTOPIA, her first fashion brand: a bright, rhinestoned universe populated by the It Girl, Fun Girl, Sporty Girl and Cool Girl, each with her own color story and variation on cropped tops, micro skorts, striped leg warmers and glossy bags. For Aliyah, though, clothes are only one part of the idea. FABTOPIA is about turning the world she has been building online for years into something people can finally step into themselves.

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LO’AMMI: Before we get into FABTOPIA, take us back a little. How did fashion and creating content really begin for you?

ALIYAH: Basically, I really started making content during COVID because I was bored and had nothing to do in the house. And I’ve always loved fashion because my parents owned a recycling company growing up. So most of the clothes we would get would be used clothing. So I always had to find a way to make it my own and make it eccentric and fun because that’s most of the shopping that we did all year.

I knew that I wanted to go into fashion in some type of capacity, but I didn’t know how I was gonna do it. And then TikTok came around, and I was like, okay, let me just post my thoughts and what I’m saying, but I’m gonna wear a really cute outfit when I do it because I already dress like that anyway.

Through that and me discovering my style, going to college, a lot of people started calling my style AliyahCore because whenever they saw me, they knew it was super recognizable. Or if they saw my style on somebody else, they’d be like, “Well, that’s just giving AliyahCore.” So they coined that, and then we made it a whole hashtag, and I was just showing people how to dress, how to style your clothes, how to accessorize. And from that, I ended up pivoting to music. I dropped a song; it went crazy. So that’s kind of the era that I left off on. And now I’m pivoting back into fashion with my new brand, FABTOPIA.

LO’AMMI: #Aliyahcore really became its own thing online. When did you realize people weren’t just following your style anymore—they were actually making it their own? And when did FABTOPIA start to feel like the next step?

ALIYAH: I think for me, my goal has always been to have a clothing brand. I just never really took the time to sit down and really formulate how I was gonna do it because I had no idea it was gonna take this much time, this much effort. And at the time, I was just blowing up on social media. So it was just kind of like, I’m having opportunity here, opportunity there. I never really had time to sit down and be like, “Oh, okay, I need to lock in and focus on this fashion brand.”

But my dad had pulled me to the side, and he was just like, “These brands make so much money off of you. I feel like you can make a lot of money and just really sell stuff that you like if you made your own brand, and you could do this on your own.”

At first I just pushed it to the side. I was like, whatever, I’m doing music, I’m lit, I’m performing. But then I was just like, I do wanna own something that’s tangible and that shows actual proof of not only my influence within culture, but to young Black women everywhere.

With AliyahCore, when it started popping off, I really knew because on TikTok, you can see the amount of people who use your hashtag when you make a post. And then every day, because I would always hashtag AliyahCore on every single post, I would just see it going up and up and up because it says the amount of views. And then I started seeing it getting millions of views and going super crazy, and celebrities started reaching out to me to style them in AliyahCore. And it just started being insane. I think that’s when I really was like, okay, this is something that’s real.

What became AliyahCore was never built from one reference point. The internet gave Aliyah access to entire visual worlds at once, and FABTOPIA allows her to pull those influences into a collection without flattening them into a single aesthetic.

LO’AMMI: Your style pulls from so many different places: Y2K, Japanese street style, alternative fashion. When you started building FABTOPIA, how did you figure out what makes something feel specifically FABTOPIA?

ALIYAH: I feel like, you know, I’m a part of Gen Z, so the internet and internet culture have been a big part of my life since I’ve been a kid. I love just being online, exploring different cultures, different communities, just everything.

And honestly, I’m first-gen here in America. So my reality is very much through the lens of that and not of a person who lives in America and who has guidelines for how to navigate American society, because I’m the first generation to live here. So, I feel like I have a really big worldview on cultures and all sorts because I grew up with a lot of outside influences.

I think you can see that a lot within my fashion. Even with K-pop and anime, I take so much inspiration from that because animation is something that I truly love. And I think the character designs and also the clothing design are just so iconic. So I really started seeing that, and I was like, I need to incorporate this in AliyahCore. But at the same time, for FABTOPIA, I wanted it to be like, even if a girl was just getting into fashion, or anybody was just getting into fashion, they could still wear the outfit. And it’s kind of just like a starter kit, basically.

That “starter kit” takes a particularly playful form in the lookbook. Rather than organize the debut solely by garment, FABTOPIA presents a cast.

LO’AMMI: I love that the lookbook has these different girls—the It Girl, the Fun Girl, the Sporty Girl, and the Cool Girl. Were you thinking of them as different characters, or are they basically all different versions of you?

ALIYAH: No, they’re all different characters. I was really inspired by girl groups, especially the Spice Girls because I just feel like for a group to be super huge and iconic, one of the biggest groups in the world, and all their names is just Baby Spice, Ginger Spice, Scary Spice—a lot of people didn’t even know their actual names, but their personas were so solidified to the point where it’s like, just by what they wore, you know what the fuck they were giving off.

And I think for FABTOPIA, I was like, I want this to be a mood for everybody. Although I feel like I’m every one of the girls, I definitely feel like a lot of people relate to each one differently.

LO’AMMI: I like that you always try to think about people relating to it on their own. That seems like one of the things that made #AliyahCore fun is that people take the idea and make it completely their own, right?

ALIYAH: Yeah, exactly. And I always say AliyahCore, although it had a lot to do with fashion, it’s really not about fashion. It’s really more about a lifestyle of being yourself and being an individual, not caring about being perceived, and just not giving a fuck, being fabulous and just being you. And that’s what I’ve always preached about AliyahCore too.

That freedom also means accepting that what looks completely normal to the person wearing it might read very differently to everyone else.

LO’AMMI:  I like that. And there are also so many playful details in the collection. Like you got tiny skorts, you got leg numbers, rhinestones, bright colors, the bags. So when you're putting a look together, what makes something feel fun and over the top without feeling like a costume?

ALIYAH: I think it’s crazy because I feel like if you are an alternative person in general, at least for me, I always get the question, “Oh, are y’all wearing a costume? Are you dressed up for somewhere? Are you going to a costume party? Are you cosplaying?”

And I think that when you’re an alternative girl, especially an alternative Black girl, a lot of people already think you’re cosplaying. It’s very hard for people to wrap their minds around you just waking up every single day and wanting to dress super animated and cool, weird in a sense.

So I think the whole costume thing is like, to some people it might look like a costume for sure, but I think anything you wear, you can make your own. It’s just about how you rock it, really.

LO’AMMI: Has building FABTOPIA changed the way you think about fashion at all? Because now you’re not just styling yourself, you’re thinking about production, what people actually want to wear, how things fit. What part of becoming a founder has surprised you the most?

ALIYAH: Honestly, I would say that I’ve worked harder since starting this brand than I’ve ever done in my life. I’ve literally barely been getting sleep. It’s just been occupying my day-to-day, 24 hours. But if I’m being honest, I do that with anything that I’m passionate about. I put my all into it.

So I would definitely say for me, it’s just solving things that women deal with every single day that a lot of brands really look over. Like, for example, my skirts all have shorts underneath them because I know that when I’m wearing a mini skirt, I want a little bit more coverage, and I don’t want the skirt to be too long still. And with my tops, they’re all adjustable on the sleeves because I know that not every woman’s body is built the same.

So it’s really just shown me how unintentional a lot of designers are, or a lot of wholesalers or whatever are. I think that for me, I really wanted to be intentional about comfort, but also it being a super cute design.

LO’AMMI: Music and fashion already feel so connected in your world. Do you even separate those things creatively anymore? Or does it all start with the same Aliyah universe and then become a song, an outfit, a visual—whatever it needs to be?

ALIYAH: Yeah, I think everything is connected. I think AliyahCore is a world in itself, and everything that I do is just an extension of who I am as a person, whether it’s music, whether it’s social media, whether it’s my brand. It’s all under the same universe.

And I’ll say it’s all under the same Milky Way because every single planet, which is like my music or my social media or my brand, is very much different, but it’s all an extension of me, basically.

LO’AMMI: Where did the name FABTOPIA actually come from?

ALIYAH: A lot of people ask me this, but literally, my favorite movie growing up was called Barbie Fairytopia. … It’s so mythical and cute and girly. It’s like the best movie ever.

Whenever I would watch it, I felt like I was just escaping into this new universe where things were just perfect, and I loved it so much. But also, growing up, my mom used to be a hairstylist in Clayco, and we used to go to her hair salon every single day after school. And she had a McDonald’s right next to it. And they used to have this drink called Fruitopia. And I used to love it so bad. And now they’ve, like, banished it from the face of the earth. Like, you can’t find it anywhere. It’s really freaking crazy.

But I just realized that every memory that I have with “-topia,” or whatever it is, always brought me into a world or a memory that I really genuinely enjoy. And I was like, what word do I be saying a lot? What do I want this brand to represent? And it was “fab.” Like, I say “fab” all the freaking time. If you go through my TikTok or my Instagram, you know.

But yeah, I just mixed those two together. And I was like, this is a utopia of fabulousness. So it was FABTOPIA.

LO’AMMI: You’ve gone from creating this recognizable personal style to watching #AliyahCore become a whole movement. Now people can actually wear a piece of that world through FABTOPIA. When you think really big about where this could go, what do you want FABTOPIA to become?

ALIYAH: I want FABTOPIA to be culture-defining in a way that Baby Phat was, in a way that Supreme was, in a way that Rocawear was. I want it to be more than just a clothing brand. I really, really want it to be a part of culture in general.

And I want it to shape how people feel about themselves because I feel like when I wore Baby Phat, I felt confident. I feel like I’m really that girl, like I’m an It Girl. And I want FABTOPIA, when you put it on, you feel fabulous. You feel like nobody can stop you ’cause you're just really that girl—or guy, or they/them—I think it’s for everybody.

But I genuinely just want it to be a part of culture, and I want to involve my community as much as I can within it. And I want a storefront too.