It’s all well and good to commission John Galliano to create a waist-obscuring and outrage-inducing corset, but absence, as we learnt earlier this week, is perhaps the most intense spectacle of all. That was a lesson made obvious when Rihanna suffered a sudden bout of the flu and failed to arrive at the Met Gala: a legitimate—though not entirely unexpected—sabbatical for someone who has spent the past few years teasing spectators and journalists with an accretion of eleventh-hour entrances.
That the Met Gala’s unofficial princess had been rendered bed-bound for an event themed around “sleeping beauties” was an ironic and unfortunate twist of fate. Particularly for the wild card, London-based designer Jawara Alleyne, who was rumored to have created Rihanna’s 2024 Met Gala look. (He is now selling a line of T-shirts printed with the precise moment the musician first endorsed his work, taking what would have been the ultimate anointment into his own hands.)
But every sleeping beauty is at some point revived from hibernation and Rihanna last night emerged from her sick bed at the Carlyle Hotel in Manhattan—no less than three days after she was due to be photographed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art—dressed in a hoodie, a bias-cut skirt and a jumbo-sized Chanel handbag. At this point, it is obvious that Rihanna operates in her own time zone—once arriving at the 2023 Met Gala only after the cockroaches, and scheduling her cover interviews to take place at 3:26 a.m.—but consider this further proof that she perhaps owes you nothing more.
This article first appeared on British Vogue.
