Last week, LVMH Möet Hennessy Louis Vuitton added Fenty — Rihanna’s beauty line — to its group of luxury brands. The partnership makes Fenty LVMH’s first new in-house brand to debut since 1987 — and makes Rihanna the first female partner to launch an LVMH brand.
Following in the footsteps of other famous fashionistas like the Kardashian-Jenners, Rihanna’s partnership proves that, in the influencer age, personal brands can become big businesses.
Rihanna created Fenty with the goal of providing more inclusive cosmetics options, raising $10m from Kendo (LVMH’s cosmetics incubator) to get the business off the ground.
After launching in 2017 with 40 different skin tones, Fenty brought in more than $550m in revenue in its first year.
Fenty’s massive success inspired LVMH to invite outsider Rihanna to launch a new brand under the luxury company’s ultra-exclusive corporate umbrella (ella, ella, eh, eh, eh — sorry).
Rihanna, who will be the first woman of color to run an LVMH line, will own 49.99% of the company.
The LVMH-Fenty collaboration is a collision of old and new: LVMH has called its brands “maisons” since it fabricated clothes for French aristocrats in their homes (“maisons,” en français); Rihanna has “Thug Life” tattooed on her knuckles.
But, even though LVMH did more than $14B in revenue last quarter, the luxury conglomerate doesn’t have as much influence with young, fashionable consumers as Rihanna — who has 70m Instagram followers.
For decades, celebrities — mostly men like Paul Newman or George Clooney — have parlayed newsworthy names into successful side hustles, usually by launching kitschy alternatives to big brands.
But a new generation of celebrities — mostly women like Gwyneth Paltrow, Kylie Jenner, and Kate Hudson — is transforming star power into sales power and building billion-dollar businesses that actually threaten the big brands.
Now, stuffy old companies like LVMH are actively seeking out partnerships with celebrities like Rihanna to capitalize on their influence: When Rihanna recently partnered with Puma for a sneaker collaboration, the company’s footwear sales increased 23%.