Rihanna and LVMH Are Temporarily Closing Fenty
The news comes less than two years after she became the first woman to ever create a brand at the world’s largest luxury conglomerate.
Rihanna made history when she teamed up with LVMH on her very own luxury fashion label, Fenty, in May of 2019. This wasn’t the launch of just any celebrity fashion line; the last time the world’s largest luxury conglomerate, which is home to Dior, Louis Vuitton, and Celine, launched a major brand from scratch was in 1987, with the namesake label of the legendary couturier Christian Lacroix. What’s more, Rihanna became the first woman to create an original LVMH brand, and the first-ever woman of color to ever helm one of its maisons.
Now, less than two years later, Rihanna is moving on. She and LVMH have agreed to put things at Fenty on pause. “Rihanna and LVMH have jointly made the decision to put on hold the RTW activity, based in Europe, pending better conditions,” the latter told WWD in a statement on Wednesday. While it didn’t offer any reasons, fans have been disappointed in the label’s high price range since its first drop, which ranged from $200 to $1,500.
Rihanna has had so much going on—Fenty Beauty, Fenty Skin, Savage x Fenty, and soon even a cookbook—that few spotted the warning signs. Whereas Fenty drops once seemed to happen almost constantly, the last one was in November of 2020, and was as simple as a footwear collaboration with Amina Muaddi. The skeleton staff at Fenty’s headquarters in Paris will continue to phase out, and the e-commerce site that’s served as Fenty’s hub is expected to shutter within the next few weeks. As for the rest of its online presence, well, the official Fenty Instagram account hasn’t posted since January 1, 2021.
There’s a good chance that some of Rihanna’s loyal fanbase may consider the news a boon. Her plate may still be full to the brim, but one less project on the docket means just a tad more availability to work on and release new music—something the singer hasn’t done since her beloved album Anti in 2016. In fact, the singer had recently signaled that more music, which she’s “always working on,” may be on its way: This year 2021 “is a little unknown for everybody, and nobody is sure what restrictions there are going to be,” she told the tabloid Closer in December. “My creativity is within my control though, and I want to take my music and my brands to a different level.”
Still, the Navy may not want to get their hopes too high just yet. WWD reports that LVMH now plans to concentrate on Fenty Beauty and Fenty Skin, which it also owns. And then there’s Savage x Fenty: The mega private equity company L Catteron (which LVMH has a stake in) just put $115 million into a retail expansion of the lingerie line that Rihanna launched in 2018.
