One Robyn Rihanna Fenty disconcerted luxury journalists everywhere this week when she deigned to let herself be papped in Timberlands, a Stüssy tracksuit, and a single, solitary strand of negligibly sized diamonds while in transit in New York City.
“Did Rihanna—a woman who once schlepped 55 pounds and a million US dollars worth of Guo Pei couture up the steps of the Met—just prioritize comfort?” fashion editors asked one another in disbelief, clutching their Bottega Veneta Sardines like emotional support animals. “What do you think would happen,” a fellow writer texted me, “if Rihanna became a capsule wardrobe evangelist?”
British Vogue’s Daniel Rodgers, ever the stoic, tried to take all of this on the chin while unconvincingly deploying the word “utilitarian” to describe Ri’s look, while I Slacked people that old Karl Lagerfeld chestnut about sweatpants and refreshed the Financial Times homepage in case the stock market crashed.
It was something of a relief, then, to see Rihanna crop up on the wires at Nordstrom Century City on Thursday in an outfit that read the concept of “sweater weather” for filth. The (let’s face it: retired) musician arrived for the launch of Savage X Fenty Lavish Lace in a camo-print corset from her recent Diesel collab that obscured precisely nothing. This wasn’t lingerie dressing, to be clear; it was simply lingerie, paired with a Fendi coat and Swarovski-embellished YSL mules with shades of Sugar Kane Kowalczyk to them (not that Rihanna ever gets the fuzzy end of the lollipop).
