Rihanna Launches her Lingerie Brand Savage x Fenty at New York Fashion Week
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Fashion models tend to be seen as paragons of beauty — a message that consumers absorb, whether they want to or not — so it matters who brands work with. Rihanna’s emphasis on hiring models of many sizes and ethnicities (and a few with pregnant bellies) sends a message.
The runway isn’t everything, however. Though Rihanna launched Savage x Fenty last spring with the message that it would be for people of “all shapes and sizes,” she quickly caught flak from some fans for only going up to a DDD bra. (That’s as far as Victoria’s Secret and Aerie go, too.) Looking at the brand’s website, that still seems to be the case.
Rihanna’s fashion show makes Victoria’s Secret look obsolete
With more than 1,100 stores, sales of $5.8 billion last year, and a cast of “angels” that it markets as in-house celebrities, Victoria’s Secret is by far the most visible lingerie brand in America. Every winter it puts on a blowout fashion show, complete with performances by musicians like Bruno Mars, Taylor Swift, and, yes, Rihanna.
Victoria’s Secret is all about a placating, unchallenging brand of sexy. It’s pushup bras, angel wings, glossy curls, long legs, and impossibly toned abs. Though the brand seems to have made some strides on racial diversity with its latest slate of runway models, announced earlier this week, there’s really only one kind of body on display.
Whereas the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show can feel like an homage to the male gaze, Savage x Fenty’s show expressed something entirely different: A crowd of underwear-clad people communing with each other (leaning on a partner’s shoulders or lunging across the grass in sync) and with themselves. They get weird.
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