Rihanna’s Fenty fashion label to close down after only two years

Barely two years after its launch, the fashion house owned by Rihanna and the LVMH group is closing down. It’s Rihanna’s first business failure.

The launch of Fenty was a landmark, but the long-awaited success never came. Barely two years after its arrival on the market, the fashion brand Fenty, launched jointly by Rihanna and LVMH, is ceasing its activities, reports the “Women Wear Daily” on Wednesday February 10. And this was no surprise.

In addition to the Instagram account of the ready-to-wear brand Fenty frozen since January 1, 2021, and a last collection dating back to November 2020 with the line of heels created in collaboration with designer Amina Muaddi, sales were not as expected. Rihanna’s cash machine earned through her Fenty makeup line launched in partnership with LVMH (which made around half a million dollars in sales in its first year) was not enough to find audience for her the clothing brand, reports WWD.

With her Fenty ready-to-wear line, Rihanna launched the series of first times. She was the first celebrity to benefit from such means and recognition, but also the first woman to create an original brand at LVMH, and the first black woman to run a fashion house within the luxury group.

Fenty was also the first fashion house to be created by the group since 1987, when Bernard Arnaud helped Christian Lacroix and his partner, Jean-Jacques Picart, to launch their brand. The real and digital popularity as well as the business acumen of the singer obviously seduced the big boss of LVMH who hoped to bet on the digital treasure offered to him by the star.

With her 90 million followers on Instagram, the singer was indeed offering a significant promise: a high power of influence on Generation Z, this very volatile and highly coveted audience. An argument that the star has been able to prove in the past by collaborating on several occasions with LVMH. First with Dior who made her its first black muse in 2015. We remember that a few months later, the house took the approach further, entrusting Rihanna with the creation of a pair of sunglasses with futuristic accents.

In 2017, Rihanna received the support of Kendo, the LVMH group's beauty brand incubator, who surrounded her with the best specialists in the business to launch her Fenty Beauty cosmetics brand. There too, big success. Which suggests that LVMH and Rihanna are not over yet. Proof, if necessary, the announcement of a fundraising of 115 million dollars for Rihanna’s lingerie brand Savage x Fenty (partly owned by LVMH) which was done only a few minutes after the announcement of the closing down of Fenty.