Rihanna recently suffered a staggering $36 million loss after her luxury fashion venture with Louis Vuitton failed to achieve the anticipated success.
Recent financial reports from her British company, Denim UK Holdings, reveal that Rihanna’s high-fashion project, Fenty, was an ambitious yet costly endeavor. Launched in 2019 under the prestigious LVMH (Louis Vuitton Moët Hennessy) banner, the line aimed to blend Rihanna’s edgy street style with high-end Paris fashion.
However, by 2021, the brand had quietly closed its doors. The decline of Fenty is attributed to a combination of unfortunate timing and steep pricing. The pandemic struck just as the brand was gaining traction, limiting Rihanna’s ability to engage in her usual hands-on creative involvement. Travel restrictions meant she couldn’t visit her Paris workshop or her Italian production partners, a significant setback for someone known for attention to detail.
Both Rihanna and LVMH invested heavily in the brand (around $35 million each), creating a historic moment as it was to be the first luxury house led by a Black woman within the LVMH empire. It was a bold initiative, but even the queen of reinvention couldn’t overcome the market’s reluctance to spend nearly $1,000 on a denim jacket.
The high price tags certainly suggested “Paris Fashion Week” rather than an average consumer’s splurge. For example, a corseted shirtdress was priced at about $810, while many items reached four figures. In contrast, her beauty and lingerie lines, Fenty Beauty and Savage X Fenty, flourished thanks to their focus on inclusivity and accessibility, while the couture side struggled to resonate.
By early 2021, both Rihanna and LVMH decided it was best to discontinue the fashion line. They released a joint statement that read, “LVMH and Rihanna reaffirm their ambition to concentrate on the growth and long-term development of the Fenty ecosystem, focusing on cosmetics, skincare, and lingerie.”
It’s also important to recognize the groundbreaking nature of Fenty’s launch. It represented the first new fashion house from LVMH in over thirty years and the first led by a woman of color. Rihanna became a symbol of a new era in luxury, adeptly merging music, culture, and business like few others have.
