“I’m a curvy girl, and if I can’t wear it myself, it’s not going to work,” Rihanna told me, dressed in a fresh, white, cotton-canvas outfit and spindly stilettos to launch her Fenty luxury brand and its first home – a pop-up store in Paris.
Behind the sexy-but-sporty line-up of dresses and shapely jackets, with shiny sunglasses and glittery jewels, is the singer herself, and she admits that this look, to be followed by an ever-changing digital offering, is all about her. “I want women to look confident and badass,” she admitted. For Rihanna, music and fashion are getting the same treatment.https://www.instagram.com/p/BxxrMy8n9tp/?utm_source=ig_embed“I don’t know how to describe it; it’s a carousel of projects and each thing gets its turn but it never stops,” she said. “It keeps going and by the time you’re done with one, the next thing is right there in front of you – that’s how it works.”
Even if it seems unlikely that this master of music, with her powerful and distinctive Bahamian origins, could replicate her performing skills with clothes, she has a powerful supporter: Bernard Arnault, Chairman and CEO of luxury behemoth LVMH, is the investor behind the Fenty brands and he appeared with members of his family at the Paris launch. “Very creative,” was his comment about the fashion offerings, with a murmur of “wait and see”.https://www.instagram.com/p/Bxxu5y8HJNh/?utm_source=ig_embedThis second string to Rihanna’s bow of visual concepts follows her Fenty Beauty range, which has had such overwhelming success at the Sephora multi-brand stores, owned by LVMH. So why not include those tried-and-tested offerings – which reportedly made €500 million in sales from their launch in September 2017 to the end of 2018 – under the multi-award-winning musician’s name?
“Beauty is not here because this is the launch of a new project, and a new brand, so we want to keep the focus on that,” Rihanna explained. “Eventually, when we open our stores, it will be everything that’s Fenty. But this is a pop-up store for the launch of this brand and we want to keep it focused, because we’d probably be over there, trying lipsticks right now, instead of looking at my earrings!”
