Courtesy of Instagram @badgalriri.
For anyone coming-of-age in the mid-late ‘00s, your formative years were undoubtedly soundtracked by Rihanna. But as soon as the Bajan singer stormed the music scene with her breakthrough single “SOS” in 2006, it was the music video that really had us hooked: shimmying about in a sea-green scarf top, with sparkling, gold-dusted skin and dangling chandelier earrings, we knew there was something more to this pop star. She was feminine but also cool, sexy and original: how could we bottle up and keep some of that for ourselves?
So, when the news broke that Rihanna would become the first woman to create an original brand at the world’s largest luxury group, LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton, there was a collective: “Yes.” Unlike many celebrity-led lines that read like shameless cashing-in or questionable extensions of their own ‘brand,’ this actually feels like something we’d all been waiting for — because who better than Rihanna, after all, the pop star whose music videos and red carpet ensembles we’ve eagerly lapped up for over a decade, to step in and change the old guard of the fashion industry?
Not only will Rihanna be the first woman tasked with creating an LVMH fashion house from scratch, but she will also be the first woman of colour to head-up a brand at the French luxury conglomerate. Less than a decade ago, the decision to have a pop star at the helm of a luxury brand would have been unimaginable, but thanks to the success of fellow pop star Victoria Beckham’s eponymous brand, for example, or the appointing of left-of-field visionaries, such as Virgil Abloh — who has led menswear at LVMH’s flagship brand Louis Vuitton since March 2018 — the once hermetically sealed industry is slowly beginning to open up.
But that’s not to say that any star could do this either. Since the launch of her inclusive beauty line, Fenty Beauty in 2017, and her phenomenally successful lingerie and nightwear brand, Savage X Fenty in 2018, Rihanna has proved herself as more than just a pop star with chameleonic taste, but a capable business woman in her own right with the know-how and creativity to lead a global fashion brand. The question is what can we expect from Fenty Maison?
The Fenty fashion brand — set to be based in Paris — will no doubt strive to encapsulate Rihanna’s personal style, but if we’ve learned anything from inhaling her looks over the years, it’s that you can’t second guess Rihanna. More than any of her peers — yes, even Beyonce — Rihanna is a fashion trailblazer, someone that not only anticipates trends, but makes a trend a trend. One need only look as far as her love affair with British designer Molly Goddard’s voluminous frothy dresses, for example, to appreciate the multi-hyphenate’s ability to steer a micro trend into the mainstream. Where Rihanna had been wearing Goddard’s tiered tutus — as well as enormous confections by Giambattista Valli — sas far back as 2016, the craze for mega-volume and feminine frills exploded at the autumn/winter shows earlier this year. Or, who can forget the oversized pant suit she wore on stage at the 2015 Grammy Awards? Paired with a diamond choker and slicked back hair, the look predated the current high street trend for trouser suits by almost four years.
Long before that, since the beginning of her career, Rihanna’s music videos have granted us fearless fashion inspiration. While everyone wears those vintage-style oversized denim jackets nowadays, the music video for her epoch-defining track with Calvin Harris, “We Found Love,” showcased the trend for faded-out jean jackets long before anyone else did. Across the board, her music videos have brought us a cacophony of trends from bright red hair worn with Creole hoop earrings and a black and white striped blazer in “What’s my Name” to fringed hotpants, a rockabilly quiff and deep pink eyeshadow (“Rude Boy”); a navy blue sheath worn over matching skinny trousers (“Love on the Brain”) or more recently, acid-green floral high-waisted pants worn with a crimson crop top in the video for “Wild Thoughts”. Meanwhile, her personal style as captured by the paparazzi, comprises everything from complicated feminine dresses, oversized casuals, spindly tattoos, lavish jewellery, “done” nails, exposed shoulders to dramatic masculine tailoring and sportswear.
Rihanna’s undisputed track record for being ahead of the curve bodes well for the new Fenty brand, even though its not sure yet which direction it may take. But from what we know of her style, surely it will be intuitive, inventive, and certainly not concerned with any prescriptive definitions of “luxury” and “good taste”. Right now as further plans about the game-changing Maison’s launch remain hush-hush — except for the development of a fenty.com website hinting at a digital focus — all we can really hope for is that it embodies just some of that risk-taking sensibility we’ve come to love Rihanna for, so that eventually we may hold onto some of that for ourselves.