The decline of luxury fashion brands continues with the announcement that Rihanna’s ready-to-wear line Fenty has been discontinued.
The fashion line, launched in 2019, made history as the first luxury brand run by a black woman and effortlessly chimed with Generation Z’s values of inclusivity and diversity. It was also only the second luxury fashion house started from scratch by the French conglomerate LVMH — after Christian Lacroix in 1987.
According to editors at WWD, the French luxury giant and Fenty came to a mutual decision with LVMH saying in a statement, “Rihanna and LVMH have jointly made the decision to put on hold the RTW activity, based in Europe, pending better conditions.”
But LVMH and Rihanna pledged to concentrate on the long-term development of the “Fenty ecosystem.”
The Savage X Fenty lingerie brand and her hugely successful cosmetic lines Fenty Beauty and Fenty Skin will continue.
Rihanna, real name Robyn Rihanna Fenty, became the first woman of color to lead a house under the LVMH brand when the Fenty range launched in spring 2019.
However, fashion analysts suggested that although Rihanna has a huge fanbase, the Fenty label's prices were too steep for most of them.
On Jan. 1, 2021, the brand stopped posting on its Instagram account and it is understood the e-commerce site will go dark in the next few weeks.
Rihanna's moves into the fashion world have come at the expense of her music career.
Once renowned for putting out an album a year, she has not released a new set of songs since Anti in 2016.
