Rihanna’s pregnant and once again setting the rules for maternity fashion.
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The most viewed fashion show of New York Fashion Week occurred on Sunday night, and it was held in Arizona.
We are, of course, referring to Rihanna’s Super Bowl halftime performance, a 13-minute explosion of red that featured a pregnancy announcement that included workwear, puffy jackets, and a breastplate that will likely set maternity fashion trends for the ensuing ten years.
When Rihanna was first pregnant, her style was primarily determined by what she didn’t wear (i.e., anything that covered up her belly), but at State Farm Stadium, she was almost completely hidden. In order to provoke a confrontation with corporeality and highlight who has authority over her body, Rihanna frequently uses fashion as a strategy. The terms were once more redefined by this.
She gleamed brightly in head-to-toe red. If not a diamond, then a ruby: precisely, the 19.47-carat Bayco ring she wore on one hand. Or like some sort of avant-garde fertility goddess, soaked in a colour associated with the female body — particularly the pregnant female body. (Also, Valentine’s Day, but she thinks more broadly than a Hallmark moment.) It painted a picture that could be seen from every corner of the football stadium.
(It helped that her backup dancers were all dressed in white sweatshirts.)
Even before the baby news broke, what Rihanna would wear for her first major moment on a giant public stage since 2018 was so hotly anticipated that on the morning of the show, not one, but two different brands told me confidentially that she was wearing looks they had custom-made for the event — though she eventually pulled a last-minute surprise.
That’s a lot of power for you. There were most likely more than two. (How many are there?) Even Oscar nominees don’t have quite as many marketers eager to take a chance on the celebrity’s favour. The estimate is that the potential reward outweighs the danger.
It will be for Loewe, whose designer, Jonathan Anderson, designed the surrealist leather breastplate Rihanna wore over her bodysuit and under that boiler suit (meant to symbolise flight, according to the brand), which was accessorised with diamond brooches and left open at the torso to free the tummy.
Also Alaïa, whose creative director, Pieter Mulier, designed the two leather coats she wore on top: a padded red leather bolero with integrated gloves that curved to drip off the back of her torso as she sang, and a voluminous padded red leather robelike number with integrated gloves that puddled at her feet as she rose to the heavens at the end. (Alaïa had an excellent Super Bowl performance; Rihanna also donned a crocodile print skirt and a shearling leather jacket from the brand for her pregame news conference.)
Her sneakers were an MM6 Maison Margiela x Salomon sneaker collaboration. Why wear just one brand when you can mix and match so many?
They provided a quick lesson in high-end cool, but the idea of the look wasn’t so much what Rihanna was wearing as it was how what she was wearing showed off the curve of her once-growing stomach. How it was presented.
Inside Rihanna’s World
The musician, who last performed publicly at the Grammys in early 2018, will headline the Super Bowl on Feb. 12 in Glendale, Ariz.
- After several years largely away from the stage, Rihanna used Super Bowl LVII’s halftime show to perform a dozen hits, nod to her nonmusical business and announce that she’s pregnant.
- Rihanna’s first single, “Pon de Replay,” was released in 2005. “The Barbados-born singer hitched a ride on a precise and propulsive reggae beat; the result was one the summer’s biggest and most seductive club tracks,” our critic wrote.
- The singer’s most recent album, “Anti,” was released in 2016. This is what made it unlike any of her records that preceded it.
- In 2016, Rhianna debuted her first Fenty x Puma collection with a show that stood out for scale and scope. Here is what she said about her work in fashion.
- In 2019, the singer and entrepreneur released “Rihanna,” which was billed as a “visual autobiography.” A fashion critic and a music critic got together to debate its significance.
- In 2022, Rihanna announced her first child with an artfully staged photoshoot. It was the overture to a series of powerful statements she later made through her maternity style.