Experimentation in Fashion
a fly girl’s guide to not looking like everyone else: an analysis of @subwaysessions
You stumble upon a video of a subway station in Manhattan. There’s no music to the video, just the shuffling of wheels on tracks, the monotone echo of train times, and the screech of trains as they come to a halt. Suddenly, a woman enters the frame, pacing back and forth and waiting for the 6 train in an outfit that seems to be entirely composed of pieces from your closet that you would hesitate to wear in public. She says nothing–only meanders around, plays with some poses, showcases the movement and the layering of her outfit to the audience on the other side of the screen. She lets the clothes speak for themselves, and they do speak.
One of her most popular videos garnered nearly 57 million views across platforms, and the comments section is filled with thousands of people weighing in on her look. While this one wasn’t well-received from the internet, ranging from comments such as, “everyone’s so creative,” and “is the style in the room with us?” Instead of retreating from the backlash, she continued to put her foot on the gas, posting a new, unconventional outfit of the day in a subway tunnel multiple days a week for the past two years since the original video went viral. Since then, her account has become a place where people feel comfortable offering their objective commentary on her outfits.
In a world where many are terrified to experiment with their expression for fear that they will be personally attacked for it, I was pleasantly surprised looking through her comment section and find that the vast majority of the comments were explicitly discussing her outfit, not resorting to unfounded attacks on her character. She has successfully created a dialogue directly between the pieces and those who perceive her curation and artistry, which is just about as high a compliment as an artist can ask for. And she is an artist–as she says in her interview with The Cut magazine, “Clothing is my art. I also mentioned that my body is a canvas. It’s like painting. Every single time, it comes out different, but it reflects your emotion and how you feel” (Issawi, 2023).
Her name is Kristina Avakyan, she’s a New York based stylist and artist. Like a true New Yorker, she wasn’t trying to stir discussion and provocation in uploading her outfit of the day videos–she was simply being herself. She lives in the Lower East Side, where her polarizing style doesn’t cause a passerby to even bat an eyelash, though when she is lifted out of that context, on to the screen of someone in middle of nowhere America, or even as close as another borough, such as the Bronx or Queens, she becomes the topic of discussion.
(from her viral tiktok, @subwaysessions 7/29/2023)Avakyan exemplifies this fascinating aspect of being an artist that you cannot control what something becomes once it becomes a part of the collective consciousness. She clearly understands this idea in her videos–she offers no justifications, no explanations, no storytimes offering the origins of these pieces. She merely paces along the subway floor, silent and staring neutrally at the camera, inviting your judgement or your praise. She refuses to let the discussion devolve into either personal attacks or the “let people enjoy things” criticism toward people for having an opinion at all. She never replies to comments, never publicly acknowledges her viewers’ commentary. She merely wears what she likes and posts the video. To me, that’s a fully realized personal style. That’s effortless chic.
Her content is also a fun litmus test for our own personal style. I personally like the majority of her outfits–I feel that Avakyan is really talented at creating a unique color story and at mixing different fabrics and textures. I also feel that she’s gotten even better with time. I think her recent outfits are so good that anyone would be willing to overlook the basketball shorts and sheer nude leotard that shot her into the algorithm, which is a testament to the importance of trial and error in fashion. I’ve shown her videos to some of my friends, and we all have different reactions to everyone's looks, and that is the beauty of her work to me. That should be the landscape in which we build fashion criticism –what works for you. Sure, there are looks that she pulls off that I would never wear, but then there are some polarizing looks of hers that I think are genius. There are also some outfits that she puts on that I don’t believe should ever be worn again, but regardless of what anyone thinks, she is consistent, unique, and memorable with her style and content. I believe the community that she has fostered around unfiltered dialogue is genuinely fun and positive to the fashion internet ecosystem. And whether or not every outfit resonates with you, she bears a style accolade that no one will be able to take away from her: Once conservatives and evangelical Christians start calling your outfits “demonic” on Facebook, you know you’re on the right track in terms of looking fashionable.