CULTURE

Everything We Know About Rihanna’s Luxury Fashion Brand for LVMH

Her upcoming LVMH brand is going to be quite expansive, for one.

by Marissa G. Muller

Louis Vuitton : Front Row - Paris Fashion Week - Menswear Spring/Summer 2019
Stephane Cardinale – Corbis

With her many fashion collaborations, Rihanna has gone from a fashion muse to an actual designer—and a gifted one at that. That design savvy is one of the reasons LVMH is partnering with her on her first full-fledged luxury fashion brand, which was first the subject of speculation back in January. Now Rihanna’s LVMH luxury brand is official, and with that come the first details about it. One of the most interesting we’ve learned is that Rihanna has invested much of her own money into the venture and will be a 49.99 percent shareholder via her company Denim UK Holdings, as Business of Fashion reports.

According to financial filings obtained by the accounting firm Ledouble, Rihanna has invested 29,988,000 euros into her upcoming brand, while LVMH has injected 30 million euros into it. These investments are massive votes of confidence in the line, from both Rihanna and LVMH, which has not launched a new brand since it did so with Christian Lacroix in 1987. LVMH has worked with Rihanna before, as their beauty incubator program, Kendo, backed the wildly successful Fenty Beauty, which is estimated to hit the billion-dollar mark before the competing celebrity beauty line Kylie Cosmetics. (It made 500 million euros in 2018 alone, per BoF.)

With her first luxury fashion line, Rihanna is poised to shatter all kinds of new records. As much as her name alone can carry it, she’s also working with top talent to ensure its success. That includes hiring directly from Louis Vuitton and Celine, as WWD recently noted, and picking Jean-Baptiste Voisin, LVMH’s chief strategy officer, as her brand’s president.

As for the scope of Rihanna’s line, which has the working title Project Loud France—a nod to her 2010 album Loud—it will potentially include everything from women’s wear and men’s wear to clothing for kids, footwear, leather goods, athleisure, and eyewear, which she may have already offered a sneak peek of while out and about in New York City. Rihanna’s line will also reportedly include “goods linked to lifestyle,” high-tech products, office supplies, home decor, and garden products, so you can live a RiRi-approved life, from weed whacking to lounging in your living room. The only downside? There’s no release date yet.