Rihanna, closes the Fenty fashion line

Less than two years after its official launch, the LVMH group and Rihanna have decided to pause – indefinitely – the fashion label Fenty: part of the ecosystem co-created with the singer, which also includes the line Fenty Skin, Fenty Beauty e Savage x Fenty, the fashion brand has particularly suffered the negative effects of the pandemic, which came at a time of great transition. In fact, Fenty, the only brand created from scratch by the French group together with that of Christian Lacroix at the end of the 1980s, was still and undoubtedly search for a well-defined identity and a corresponding segment of customers: the younger and more urban one initially identified did not in fact prove to be adequate to expectations, as demonstrated by the drastic drop in sales in 2020 in a market report by the consulting firm McKinsey.

In 2019, when Fenty was unveiled, Rihanna made history as first black woman at the helm of a brand within LVMH: a choice that came following the singer’s enormous success in previous years’ collaborations with Puma and River Islands, for which the group had decided to give the artist the full creative control: «Designing a line like this with LVMH is an incredibly special moment for us. Bernard Arnault gave me a unique opportunity to develop a fashion house in the luxury sector, without artistic limits, ”Rihanna said at the time. The first sign of the closure of the brand was undoubtedly the inactivity of its Instagram page, stopped since the beginning of January, as well as the stop to the news in terms of clothing and accessories: the latest collection presented was the second collaboration with Amina Muaddi for a shoe capsule.

Now, as confirmed by LVMH, Fenty will be waiting for better conditions, focusing on the lines that instead continue to bear fruit: just think that Savage x Fenty just raised $ 115 million of funds for further expansion in retail. The lingerie line, in fact, unlike the fashion one, has from the very beginning conveyed very clear and in a certain sense revolutionary messages for the reference sector, conquering a large audience thanks to the inclusiveness represented by models – in shows such as in advertising campaigns – from different skin tones, shapes and weights, but not only. In fact, last fall, Savage x Fenty launched a special capsule collection presented by black women who survived breast cancer. May Fenty Fashion, in this period of pause, find the right formula – from the values ​​to communicate, up to the range of prices in relation to quality – for reborn from its ashes?