Rihanna and LVMH Team Up to Create a Luxury Fashion Label
January 18 2019 - 3:59PM
Dow Jones News
By Matthew Dalton
PARIS -- Rihanna has used her army of social-media followers to
build big businesses selling cosmetics, lingerie and
sportswear.
Now, LVMH Möet Hennessy Louis Vuitton is betting the pop icon
can crack the luxury fashion market, wielding her Instagram power
to elbow aside the industry's elite brands.
Rihanna and LVMH, the French fashion conglomerate that counts
Louis Vuitton and Dior among its dozens of brands, are teaming up
to start a luxury fashion label, said a person familiar with their
plans. The new line is expected to launch in the coming months with
a range of products including ready-to-wear, handbags and
accessories, the person said.
The collaboration, first reported Thursday by Women's Wear
Daily, shows how radically the power of social media has changed
high-end fashion. Brands that once counted on acclaim from an elite
group of critics and retail buyers now rely on social platforms to
market their designs, particularly to younger consumers. That
requires fashion houses to court influencers -- people with large
online followings -- or team up with them to generate buzz.
Perhaps no influencer has a bigger reach than Rihanna, born
Robyn Rihanna Fenty in Barbados. She has 67 million followers on
Instagram and 89 million on Twitter -- 22 million more than
President Trump. She is the most downloaded recording artist of all
time, according to the Recording Industry Association of
America.
That following has helped her build her eponymous label, Fenty
Beauty, into one of the cosmetics industry's fastest-growing
brands. LVMH, controlled by the French billionaire Bernard Arnault,
owns a majority stake in Fenty Beauty. Mr. Arnault said last year
he expected the brand to generate EUR500 million ($569.5 million)
in revenue in 2018, supercharged growth after the brand launched in
Sept. 2017.
The success had Mr. Arnault gloating just months after the
launch. "We didn't pay any investment, where we see some of our
respectable peers who buy businesses of EUR200 million or EUR300
million in cosmetics and pay over EUR1 billion for them," he said
last year.
Her collaboration with German sportswear company Puma AG has
also generated strong sales, as has her new lingerie line, Savage X
Fenty.
The collaboration also represents a departure for Mr. Arnault,
who prefers to buy existing fashion labels rather than start them
from scratch. LVMH is expected to provide access to its far-flung
global supply chains, expertise in luxury retail and deep pockets
to invest in the brand.
It's unclear what identity Rihanna will give her brand. Analysts
expect that she will embrace the streetwear look that has powered
some of the fastest-growing labels in the industry, such as
Balenciaga and Gucci.
Fashion houses have been searching for creative directors who
can marry streetwear with high-end fashion. Designers such as
Virgil Abloh at Louis Vuitton, Riccardo Tisci at Burberry and Demna
Gvasalia at Balenciaga are at the forefront of the movement.
"This is another example of 'New Luxury,'" says industry analyst
Luca Solca, "where luxury and streetwear codes integrate and
hybridize."
Write to Matthew Dalton at Matthew.Dalton@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
January 18, 2019 15:44 ET (20:44 GMT)
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