Rihanna and LVMH Team Up to Create a Luxury Fashion Label

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 [e-mail]

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

January 18, 2019 15:43 ET (20:43 GMT)

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