How’s Rihanna’s fashion empire going?

She’s not just a pretty face. Rihanna has a whole umbrella (🎶🎵 ella, ella 🎶🎵) of product lines under her eponymous brand Fenty.

Even with no new albums since 2016, Rihanna has 90m+ followers on Instagram and is a brand unto herself. For instance, she recently spent 3 years as creative director at Puma.

Yet Rihanna’s newest line, Fenty Fashion House, is shuttering less than 2 years after launching with LVMH — a French fashion giant with a $320B+ valuation. This was LVMH’s first brand launch since 1987.

Nowhere to go = less clothes bought

The global fashion industry experienced a 93% drop in profit in 2020. With Americans conscientious of discretionary spending, the brands they’re buying are often affordable and promote inclusion of all sizes and ethnicities.

In contrast, Fenty pieces can cost upwards of $500. Its strategy of releasing 8 collections per year (common in high-fashion labels) wasn’t a match for Rihanna’s fan base.

It’s blue skies otherwise for RiRi

A few fashion categories, like beauty and loungewear, are doing well. In spite of a crowded market of celebrity-founded brands, Rihanna’s other Fenty lines are performing well (and a net worth of $600m+ reflects this):

• Fenty Beauty: Its revenue hit $570m as recently as 2018
• Fenty Skin: Her skincare line saw $30m in sales in ~4 months
• Savage x Fenty: The lingerie line just announced a $115m funding round (it has recently grown 200%+)

The closing of Fenty Fashion House has downsized Rihanna’s empire. But Fenty’s other lines make it so that there are, ahem, “no clouds in her stones.”