Cover Story: Sabrina Bahsoon enters her slay era post-#TubeGirlEffect

Sabrina “Tube Girl” Bahsoon graces our July digital cover. Since the #TubeGirlEffect trend took off, the globally renowned TikTok star has not known a moment of quietude. What began as a means to escape the mundane quickly hurtled her into the spotlight: now, she’s making her name in fashion alongside the biggest names in the industry — all while keeping her realness intact.

She’s poised for all of five minutes on the set of our digital cover shoot, her gaze laser-focused and unwavering, her makeup exhibiting maximum slayage. And then Sabrina Bahsoon promptly breaks character. “Ooooh, yes!” she bursts, when I announce that we’re getting nasi ayam goreng kunyit for lunch. “I was just dreaming about ayam goreng kunyit on the plane ride back home.” (She’s here for only a week and plans to satisfy her Malaysian taste buds to the fullest. She misses home, she says, but clearly not as much as she misses its food.)

Before she became Tube Girl, Sabrina Bahsoon was just your average Londoner-former law student-aspiring model and content creator, traipsing between the cosmopolitan city and home in Malaysia. “I think in the UK, it’s the city to be in,” Sabrina says of London, where she has settled for almost a decade now, and where keeps finding herself going back to. “And I’ve been to a lot of cities. Not to put down any others but London is just the city. It’s also a place where there’s a lot of opportunities.”

So, what else can be said about Tube Girl that hasn’t yet been said? As it turns out, a lot. Sabrina has shimmied her way up the social scale, and her life post-TikTok has been a whirlwind of non-stop activity: she has #TubeGirlEffected with megastars like Nicole Scherzinger, Jason Momoa and, most recently (also arguably the most iconic), Naomi Campbell. She made her grand fashion debut with BOSS and Valentino. In April she was announced as the global ambassador for MAC — a huge milestone as the first Malaysian appointed so by the brand. And she has walked for London Fashion Week and Paris, the latter where she got to flaunt her look out on the city streets.

“That’s probably one of my favourite moments in my whole career,” Sabrina says, grinning. “‘Cause I literally walked in my dress and then I asked the designer if I could go out in it, and he said yes. I literally was like Rihanna fresh out the runway, going out there in my dress. It was the coolest thing ever. I really enjoy walking, and I hope to do it more. But we’ll see!”

Today, 23-year-old Sabrina trades that wild streak of pzazz for a more subtle kind of elegance. Draped around her neck is Cartier’s Trinity necklace: an exquisite trio of white gold, rose gold and yellow gold that defines the collection. The Trinity is the focal point of our cover shoot, elevating the understated mood as the pieces ‘move’ with Sabrina — a lot like how we saw her when the #TubeGirlEffect first took place.

The gap year that changed everything

Cartier’s Trinity is dubbed a universal icon and has been worn by many iconic figures across decades: Princess Diana, Grace Kelly, Kate Middleton, Kylie Jenner; and now, an icon of postmodern pop culture, Tube Girl. Sabrina — who came beaming into the studio, swept up in the euphoria of her instant fame — has a knack for expressing herself. She is as unabashedly honest in person as you might think. She reveals that growing up, she had shaped herself up as a long-distance runner and later enrolled in school for athletics in England at 16.

“I specifically moved to the UK to train in the sport that I was doing,” she tells me. “But then while I was there, I kind of lost the love for sports. It was also way too cold to run anywhere.”

Then came the gap year: that infamous period of odd jobs, occasional all-night partying, months of ‘finding yourself’ or seeking an escape from the dreaded realities of the world. For Sabrina, it meant a total shift of perspective. “I thought I would work enough just to have at least some money saved for university,” she says. “Then after the gap year, I did my uni — I just graduated in July last year. I studied law, and after that I kind of realised I really didn’t like being in the office, or studying or doing any of that. I just knew it wasn’t for me.”

Why law? I ask. Was serving justice always a deep-seated passion of hers? “I did not ever want to do law,” Sabrina admits with a laugh. “I think I did at some point when I was in my last year of college. I was very studious. I was trying to get into Cambridge Law, thinking that was what I wanted to do. But in my gap year, I really realised I liked something more creative and I actually started making TikTok videos then. I had to go through with my degree because I was already accepted. So I said to myself, ‘Okay, do this for three years and you can do whatever you want after.’ Then as soon as I graduated, I told my parents, ‘I’m gonna do whatever I want.’”

Sabrina, of course, went on to serve in different ways — serving face, serving looks, serving iconic behaviour. But getting to where she is, especially pre-Tube Girl, was a stone-paved road. She knew that she wanted to be a fashion girlie, but knowing was only half of the journey. Thus her gap year era extended long after she graduated with her degree.

“I stayed in London just ‘cause I wanted some time to figure out what I was supposed to do,” she opens up. “At the time I was applying for music marketing internships and fashion internships, the people who would run around during Fashion Week — that’s all I really wanted to do. And I had signed onto a modelling agency in the middle of my third year of uni. I thought, ‘Okay, if I have an agency, I might be able to get some jobs.’ But in the end I didn’t get any jobs from the agency. I didn’t get any internships. I was getting rejected left, right and centre. Every casting that I went to, they were all, ‘Nah, we don’t want you.’”

(It’s a common misconception to this day, she says, that everyone seems to think she has modelled before. But she didn’t get a single modelling job until after the #TubeGirlEffect put her on the social map.)

“I was practising, though,” Sabrina says. “I would hold my own photo shoots with my friends. I was trying to get better, because obviously it’s something that you just have to practise. When I started to blow up, that’s when opportunities started coming in. Even then, the modelling agency I was with didn’t believe in it, you know. They thought it was just a one-time thing. I told them, ‘We should do something, we should capitalise on this.’ And they said, ‘It just seems like a trend to us.’ They weren’t really gunning for me to be successful in the long run. So I left that agency and decided to do my own TikTok thing, really try to pursue that properly.”

The #TubeGirlEffect indeed took full effect, and brands became very reactive. Sabrina proceeded carefully. The path from TikTok fame to a long-standing face in the industry can be treacherous and so easily fumbled. Sabrina was able to get herself two managers who were more than keen to explore what they can do.

“I made very conscious decisions,” she says. “Everybody I decided to work with in the beginning, I knew that was gonna be very important because it would set the tone of my career. The first brand I worked with was MAC. And the first fashion house that officially employed me was BOSS, and then Valentino. Which was so, so crazy. That really set the tone of me being in fashion and being part of that industry. But in the end, it was genuinely just… in which direction do I wanna place myself? So, I kind of did everything I could to get there. That’s how it all worked out.”

Mastering the art of TikTok (and beyond)

Talking to Sabrina as she’s going through her third makeover of the day, it seems to me — and probably to the rest of the world — that she’s propelled herself into stardom because of her ability to be exactly who she is. “I’m super lucky,” she says. “I don’t know, sometimes I look back and I think, ‘Why in the world?’ But I was just really lucky. And I think what was super important as well is that because I didn’t come from the industry, I didn’t have a certain way of ‘how to act’. I think people just appreciated the realness or the genuine interest in the industry. They appreciated that I was just grateful to be there.”

Thanks to the naysayers she’d encountered even before TikTok, by the time she blew up Sabrina already had her mindset fixed to ‘unbothered’. (Moisturised. Happy. In her lane. Focused. Flourishing. And definitely busy living her best life, now more than ever.) As the middle child of five — and the only one ‘chronically online’ — it was also easy for Sabrina to be elusive about it all. In fact, her own parents found out about Tube Girl through an article shared on Facebook.

“They knew about my modelling, but they had no idea about me posting online and getting views and all that,” she recalls, grinning. “When they realised it was me, they were calling me, asking, ‘What the hell is going on there?’” (Now, her dad is also her ‘dadager’, helping her find the right people to work with. Sabrina considers herself lucky to be able to get his advice and have somebody on her side, in her corner.) What about her siblings? “My siblings literally do not care,” she laughs. They supported her during her gap year era, and for that Sabrina is eternally grateful. “They’re not interested in this whole type of lifestyle, so they’re not too fazed about it. They just go, ‘I don’t get it, but you do you and I’m here to support you.’”

When in London, as she took in the big city, Sabrina quickly came to realise just how small her own presence is. “I really cared about what people thought way before,” she admits. (The message of the #TubeGirlEffect is, after all, about being unapologetically confident.) “But in my last year of uni, I just decided not to care as much, get myself involved in things I actually cared about. And moving from Durham, a really small town where everyone knew everyone, to London, where nobody cared — it was so nice and refreshing to get out of that mindset of, ‘Oh no, people are gonna talk.’ Because people really don’t care in London. And it’s so, so nice to be able to champion that for other girls as well. I think a lot of the time, girls get very caught up in their own head about what people think of them and what they’re gonna say. Not to speak for everyone, but I specifically felt that as a girl. And I felt it so much less when I was in London. I felt so much more relaxed and free. I thought, ‘Why don’t more people do this? Why is everyone so self-conscious about what people think of them, when people don’t care?’”

This mindset, paired with her Gen Z propensity to romanticise the mundane, was what created Tube Girl. “I saw a bunch of crazy stuff, people were acting crazy in London all the time,” she says. “So I figured, ‘You know what? No one’s gonna care if I record myself.’” And what of the mysterious wind blowing her hair? “That was all Beyoncé,” she laughs. “Beyoncé was my number one inspiration, because she has these huge fans at every one of her shows. And it was always so hot in the summer. I would always stay at the seat near the window, and my hair was blowing and I thought, ‘Why has nobody tried this yet?’ It seemed so obvious to me.”

Ultimately, I have to ask her: could she have had that same confidence she’d developed during her time in London, here at home?

“I think about that all the time,” she exclaims. “I think about what would happen if I went back to Malaysia that summer. But it’s because of my experiences that I ended up where I am today. I had all the same issues in Malaysia that I did in the UK. I had people that would make me feel insecure. Like the rejection, it was the same. And it’ll always be there. I think that’s how I knew it was just the mindset. And you kind of have to turn it on yourself, ‘cause everywhere you go, you’re gonna experience the same thing. You really have to see past that, and have confidence in yourself.”

She does drop a little anecdote about filming the #TubeGirlEffect in the MRT, when she almost got kicked out of the carriage. “The MRTs here don’t have that automatic wind, so I brought a wind blower with me,” Sabrina chuckles. “I think the staff weren’t okay with the filming. I also saw so many girlies in KL get away with it, so I wanted to do it too. But I guess I took it a step further by bringing a wind blower. That probably attracted a lot of attention.”

Confidence is only one aspect of the #TubeGirlEffect. Escaping the dull reality, embracing that main character energy, is another — it gives you an avenue to express yourself. “You know, I go on the tube, I put my headphones on,” Sabrina explains. “I’m not thinking that I’m in front of a bunch of people. I feel escaping into your own world is so important, because it makes you realise that nobody is watching you as much as you think they are. They have their own lives. So, it’s a way to realise, ‘I should just do what I want and be in my own world because it is my life.’”

In modelling, fashion itself plays a role. For Sabrina, shoots and runways are like a one-woman act, in the sense that she commits to a character. “I’ve been told so many times that I can’t do this,” she recalls. “I’ve been told some of the craziest things. I’ve been told, ‘Oh, maybe you can do this now because South Asian girls are trending.’ I mean, how are you telling me that my features are trending right now and I could be successful because of that? And also, growing up in Malaysia, I’m brown. I’m darker-skinned. The amount of times I’ve been told, ‘Oh, you would’ve been so beautiful if you just stayed out of the sun a little more.’ Agencies in Malaysia have told me that exact thing, and it’s very discouraging.”

She pauses for a moment, before continuing: “As a model now, I have this mindset of, ‘I can be whoever I want to be.’ It’s not me I’m thinking of when they’re taking these photos. It’s this character that they’ve set up.” She bursts out laughing. As it happens, she’s being fitted with a blonde bob cut wig — she looks nothing like the Tube Girl we know. “It’s just a way to express myself, and escape the negatives of it. I’m just gonna do my own thing. Nobody can tell me otherwise.”

An online platform is as good as you make it

The Internet is a completely different landscape today than it has ever been — and it’s especially evident among Gen Z, where sharing their lives with hundreds of thousands is the standard. I express my fascination with not only how much the younger Gen Z feel comfortable sharing, but also the way they do it. They could be rolling right out of bed, and suddenly they’re filming a five-minute-long video and not caring at all about how they look.

“I think it’s just normalising that,” Sabrina muses. “You’re literally a human being online. It’s very normal to just put yourself on there. But I do have lines I draw on social media. ‘Cause I think that the biggest shift for me was becoming a casual content creator who just liked to post videos online to making it a job. In the beginning I was just putting a lot of pressure on myself, thinking, ‘Okay, I need to share everything.’ Because that’s just what people in this industry do. But at the end of the day, that’s not who I am. So my line comes from, what would I be happy with sharing in the world? I just make sure that I’m sharing what I feel comfortable sharing at the pace where I feel comfortable sharing it. I have to give myself grace and tell myself, ‘You’re new to this and it’s okay if you’re not comfortable right now.’ Because you know, I was also thrown into it in such a way.”

Having kick-started her career through a TikTok trend, she gets her fair share of online ‘negatives’ that she speaks of, and from which she also tends to find means of escaping. “I had to talk to a lot of other creators, and what helped me was realising that it happens to everyone,” Sabrina opens up. “Also, it’s naive to think that it’s always just gonna be all love. If you’re doing something and putting yourself out there, there are going to be people that don’t like it. That doesn’t mean that you should stop doing it. It just means that you’re doing something that elicits a reaction outta somebody. I had to accept that, you know, I’m just going to make things that I am happy with, and I have to really not care about the comments because at the end of the day… I’m on SNL and you’re not!” (That reference certainly elicited a laugh from me.)

So, now that all has finally been said — what is Tube Girl’s next move? She shared about recently launching an education fund for the Palestinian children in Malaysia. “At the end of the day, the most important thing for a kid is school,” Sabrina shares. “Your childhood is based around school. My fondest memories were in school. And I think the reason why I am able to do what I do today is ‘cause I’m educated. Like, learning is a key thing. And these kids are smart and these kids are so — they have a lot of potential. So it’s nice that I can help some kids somewhere. I know that school was a haven for me. And that should be it for them, too.”

What about creatively? You best believe Tube Girl is entering her rock star era. “I’m making music now,” she tells me proudly. “But I’m not gonna promise a single. I’m sorry. It’ll drop when I’m ready.” And the vibes? The female version of The Weeknd. “Kind of dark indie pop,” she adds. “But yeah, that’s what’s happening. I’m writing music. I have a producer and everything. I think it’s the biggest hobby I’m most excited to explore. Just because I’ve never been able to think about being able to do music. And I’ve always, always, always wanted to. Even since I was a kid I would always write my own music. I would always write songs.

“And whenever somebody asked me, ‘What do you want to do when you grow up?’ I’d just say, ‘I wanna be a rock star.’”

editor-in-chief & creative direction MARTIN TEO | interview PUTERI YASMIN SURAYA | styled by BIRD LEE | photography EDMUND LEE / ONE3FOUR STUDIO | videography JIA JUN POR | assisted by STANLEY LOH | graphic design JOYCE LIM | makeup SHIYO JOO | hair MEI CHOI | jewellery CARTIER | wardrobe DIKSON MAH, HERMÈS, KITWOO, MAXMARA, MOSCHINO, RALPH LAUREN, RIZMAN RUZAINI

Find out more about SABRINA BAHSOON in the latest issue of LSA Digital Cover Vol. 023 HERE.