Rihanna’s brief foray into luxury fashion with LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton is over, the WWD discovered.
The music star and the French luxury giant mutually agreed to put Fenty maison on hold, less than two years after the launch.
The brand stopped posting to her Instagram account on January 1, and the last collection of launches on Fenty.com dates back to November 2020: shoes with nail heels in collaboration with one of Rihanna’s favorite shoe designers, Amina Muaddi . It is understood that the e-commerce site – the main distribution channel for Fenty fashion – will be unavailable in the coming weeks.
LVMH confirmed the development exclusively for WWD by means of a brief statement saying: “Rihanna and LVMH jointly made the decision to suspend the RTW activity, based in Europe, depending on the best conditions.”
According to sources, a team skeleton remains at Fenty Fenty’s headquarters in Paris to shut down the remaining operations.
Meanwhile, signaling its strong belief in Rihanna and its growing universe of Fenty products, LVMH now plans to focus on Fenty Beauty and Fenty Skin – and get involved in its successful lingerie venture.
WWD also learned that private equity giant L Catterton, in which LVMH has a stake, led a $ 115 million Series B fundraising round to support the future retail expansion of Savage x Fenty, the collection of Rihanna’s hit lingerie that launched in 2018 with California- based on the TechStyle Fashion Group.
The fundraising round also attracted significant participation from existing investors, such as Marcy Venture Partners and Avenir, along with a host of new investors, including Sunley House Capital, Advent International’s cross-fund.
Rihanna at the launch of Savage x Fenty
Clint Spaulding for WWD
“Following the completion of a fundraising round in which L Catterton acquired a stake in Savage X Fenty, LVMH and Rihanna reaffirm their ambition to focus on the long-term growth and development of the Fenty ecosystem with a focus on cosmetics, care the skin and lingerie, ”LVMH and Rihanna added in a statement to WWD.
At the end of last year, Rihanna was looking for investors to expand Savage X Fenty into sportswear, running a selection process with Goldman Sachs.
Rihanna is “sad” to have to put her fashion house Fenty on the ice.
The fashion start-up came up against the coronavirus crisis, which kept the megastar in Los Angeles, allowing it to keep hands on with Fenty Beauty and the launch last July of Fenty Skin, both based in California, but distant from the design and development teams in Paris and production sites in Italy. Of the practical type, Rihanna was known for getting on a plane to visit important fabric suppliers and to learn about the production of clothing.
It is understood that Rihanna and LVMH have finally decided to “make priorities” and focus on the United States-based Fenty ecosystem, with sources describing the launch of Fenty Skin as a “home run”. They also have other projects underway.
Market sources estimate that Fenty Skin posted sales of $ 30 million in less than four months on its online store. The brand debuted in Sephora stores this month and is also available at Harvey Nichols and Boots in the UK
The brand Fenty is said to have encouraged sales of glasses, shoes and jeans, and found an initial boost in department stores. But the challenges of creating eight ready-to-wear collections a year and running a start-up remotely have proved too costly.
The Instagram account for fashion Fenty boasted 1 million followers against 3.9 million Savage x Fenty by Rihanna and 10.5 million Fenty Beauty by Rihanna. Fenty Skin’s Instagram platform has more than 800,000 followers.
WWD broke the news in January 2019 that Rihanna, already a prodigy in colorful cosmetics in partnership with LVMH, would enter the fashion arena with her own brand after a stint as creative director at Puma.
Officially announced in May of that year, LVMH said that the Fenty house would be “centered on Rihanna, developed by her, and is taking shape with her vision in terms of rtw, shoes and accessories, including commerciality and brand communication”.
It was the first time that LVMH – whose forte is to modernize legacy brands like Dior, Louis Vuitton, Givenchy and Bulgari – has launched a fashion brand from scratch since setting up a haute couture house for Christian Lacroix in 1987.
The project was also unusually discreet for a group known for luxurious fashion shows and flashy advertising campaigns. Although there were pop-up events in famous stores like Bergdorf Goodman and Galeries Lafayette Champs-Élysées, product launches were announced on Fenty’s fashion website and on social media.
Last fall, LVMH brought in a new managing director who seemed about to adjust the positioning of Rihanna’s luxury house. Bastien Renard, who worked for 19 years at Nike in Europe and the United States, succeeded Véronique Gebel, a longtime Louis Vuitton executive in the ready-to-wear department recruited for the launch. It is understood that Renard is managing the closure and will assume a new assignment within the LVMH.
LVMH hinted that things were not at all optimistic at Fenty when it released the third quarter last October.
“In Fenty fashion, we are obviously still in a launch phase and we have to find out exactly what the right offer is. It is not easy. We were starting from scratch, ”said CFO Jean-Jacques Guiony at the time. “Obviously, we count on Rihanna’s great help in this, but I would say it is still a work in progress when it comes to really defining what the offer will be. We have successes, we have things that did not work well, so we have to separate the two and really decide what should be the main strengths of the offer in the coming years. “
Rihanna Robyn Fenty holds the titles of founder, executive director and artistic director of Fenty. Jean Baptiste Voisin, director of strategy at LVMH, oversaw the launch of the luxury fashion house, whose current offerings include $ 300 to $ 900 gladiator sandals.
Most of Rihanna’s fashions, sold mostly online on Fenty.com through see-now-buy-now items, have leaned more towards the elegant, stylistic finish.
It is understood that LVMH and Rihanna have not ruled out a second run at a luxury maison in the future, encouraged by the fact that it was able to attract regular customers, especially high-end professional women who buy other luxury brands.
Rihanna showed a serious interest and influence in fashion – along with formidable design skills and keen instincts – with her three-year stint as creative director at Puma, energizing the German active clothing brand with her Fenty by Puma project, and continuing with successful advances in beauty and lingerie – the first with Kendo controlled by LVMH.
Rihanna and models backstage
Kuba Dabrowski / WWD
Kendo, which functions as an incubator for products that end up being sold at retail by LVMH’s Sephora perfumery chain and other outposts, signed with Rihanna in 2016. Its Fenty Beauty products accumulated sales of $ 100 million north in a matter of weeks , and were hailed as a transformative brand.
Rihanna’s proximity to the LVMH dates back to at least 2015. After watching Christian Dior’s shows, one of Arnault’s most precious fashion properties, she appeared in “Secret Garden IV”, a campaign and short film shot by Steven Klein within Versailles. She was wearing Dior sunglasses, carrying the brand’s bags and wearing looks from the Esprit Dior collection.
A year later, she created a line of futuristic sunglasses in collaboration with Dior as part of her brand ambassador.
Rihanna’s talent and beauty made her a favorite of fashion designers around the world. The Barbados native has already modeled for Gucci, Emporio Armani and Balmain.
She made her design debut in 2013 with the British brand River Island, creating a collection of clothing and accessories.
See too:
Fenty Hires New Managing Director
Rihanna talks about Savage x Fenty’s Fall 2020 Collection
How Rihanna built her fashion and beauty empire
WATCH: Inside Rihanna’s fashion career