We are sitting near Quincy Grille. Allure Akaeze ’24 wears a raunchy cheetah-print bodysuit, colored neon pink and blue, with midriff and side cutouts. “I like showing skin, y’all,” they laugh. “It’s sexy. I like it. It makes me feel good about myself.”
As a multidisciplinary artist, Allure embodies counterculture and eroticism. They are a nonbinary femme lesbian practicing music, fashion, visual art, and performance art. On stage, they are Miss Pink Succubuss, a hyper-feminine character oozing sexual energy. This persona bleeds into their daily life.
Their Baby Phat jeans are light wash denim with vibrant blue zippers, channeling a Y2K princess aesthetic. Their peep-toe black sneaker heels reveal coquette pink socks. “I think that they’re silly, and I like silly shit,” Allure explained. Their accessories are arresting—a pink fur coat, a fluffy pink purse, and “super gaudy jewelry.” Clacky hot pink lightning bolts hang from their ears. A Betsey Johnson bunny necklace adorns their neck. On their wrist are homemade candy bracelets.
“A lot of those spaces, where people are wearing candy, have been very sweet to me,” Allure said, no pun intended. “I went to a concert, and I learned how folks will share candy with each other. They go ‘peace, love, unity.’ Then they’ll put [the bracelet] from one [wrist] to the other.”
Allure is very active in queer ballroom culture, especially the kiki scene, which is younger and more economically accessible. Kiki balls are loving and accepting spaces that are less competitive than traditional ballroom and center queer youths between 13 and 24 years old. “I walk Virgin Performance and Sex Siren. And Sex Siren is kind of akin to burlesque, except you’re battling someone. So it’s kind of like you’re dancing and stripteasing, and also battling someone at the same time,” they explained.
For the first time, the kiki balls allowed Allure to feel comfortable performing in a provocative style. This experience empowered them to pursue a long-standing passion for burlesque. “When I say I want to pursue burlesque, I want to do it as a job,” they declared.
As an Art, Film, and Visual Studies concentrator, they performed burlesque for their senior thesis.
“For that particular scene in my thesis, I was doing burlesque and voguing and stripping,” Allure said. They joke: “That literally is going to be a part of what I’m getting graded on, so hopefully I get an A. Because if not…that’s going to be crazy. I’ll be like, ‘I stripped for you, and I’m getting a C?’ That’s crazy. That’s crazy! For free!”
“The scene had to do with my relationship to sex and sexuality and bringing it out of a personal space into a performance space because of how I was starting to do performance work a lot more. So there’s themes regarding performance and viewership and vulnerability,” they explained.
Growing up, Allure felt pressured to be pre-med but has since forged their own artistic path at Harvard. “I’ve been super diligent about doing things that make me happy, and trying to find a way to make them work,” they said. “I feel like, if I was doing something else, I would drop out. I would just not be here, because I would not like it. And if I don’t like it, I’m not going to do it.”
Allure’s older sibling, who learned photography and taught themself pole dancing, served as an inspiration. “They were the first queer and trans person that I was around. They were also the first person who was super experimental with their fashion and gender identity and expression, from a very young age. I remember even being a lot, lot younger, and being like: ‘When I’m older, I’m going to wear whatever I want, just like them,’” Allure recalled.
“One of the things that I was the most excited about when it came to leaving home, was being able to have full autonomy over the way that I looked. Because I did not for the entirety of my childhood,” they disclosed. “Especially when I got older, and I realized how many ways that I could exist, I was like, ‘Oh my god.’ Nobody told me that this was an option.”
At Harvard, Allure reinvents fashion to signal their multifaceted identities and values, asking themself the question: “As I get dressed, what do I want to say to people?”
Their style manifests as hot pink exuberance. “It’s gotten to the point where, when I don’t wear pink, people ask me if I’m okay, which I think is very funny. And honestly, they’re right. Sometimes I’m not okay when I’m not wearing pink,” they said.
Allure comparably prefers “intense, funky makeup.” They never learned to use concealer or foundation. “I was just interested in: ‘How many colors can I put above my eyelid?’” they explained. “If you asked me to do base makeup, I would fail so miserably. But I can do my entire base makeup in pink, instead of in my skin tone, because I wanted to do a full pink face. So I’m super into stuff that’s fantastical and super colorful and almost next to drag.”
Allure frequently shaves their eyebrows and draws them in different shapes. Right now, their penciled brows are thin, charcoal lines that slant downward. This forms an angry expression, contrasting their bubbly demeanor as a sort of internal joke. “I like looking like a character, like I’m not real.”
Some may wonder if Allure’s eccentric style functions as performance art. They disagree: “A lot of it is also for myself, specifically. I think that sometimes people engage with me and my [friends] in ways that would suggest that we’re performing, but we’re not. We’re just kind of existing as ourselves, and it is different. It is non-normative, so people are like, ‘Whoa, what’s going on?’”
“I also think that I’m in a place that’s not very colorful,” they lamented, gesturing at the concrete walls around us. “If this is not going to be colorful, I will be colorful. It is also kind of commanding, and commands attention and takes up space, in a way that I like. Sometimes people will take pictures of me from across campus and be like, ‘sighting.’”
Allure finds academic nourishment in subcultural music and fashion, researching “social, cultural, and political aspects of subculture.” They admire maximalist Japanese street fashions, like Harujuku and gyaru. Their interests range from the historical intersection of punk and reggae to kink and BDSM.
They incorporate the art of Japanese decorative bondage, known as shibari, into their daily wardrobe and performance attire. “Sometimes I’ll wear it with outfits and wonder if people notice, but I have shibari rope that is hot pink,” they disclosed.
As a musician, Allure draws inspiration from musical subcultures. They rap, sing, and mix and master their own music. Last semester, they took the course AFRAMER 146X: A Black History of Electronic Dance Music, sparking an interest in house and techno. Most recently, they performed at a Hello Kitty rave.
Allure intends to pursue a long-term artistic career, centered on burlesque. They want to continue producing music and throwing underground parties to make subcultures more accessible. They hope to integrate artistry with community outreach. Most of all, they revel in pink nonconformity, finding liberating joy in conspicuous self-expression.
Kya Brooks ’25 (kyabrooks@college.harvard.edu) has many tabs open with fashion subcultures to explore.