Rihanna’s Big Red Super Bowl Reveal
She’s pregnant and once again setting the rules for maternity fashion.
The most-watched fashion show of New York Fashion Week was held in Arizona on Sunday night.
A 13-minute extravaganza of red and a pregnancy reveal in the form of workwear, puffers, and a breastplate set maternity trends for the next decade was Rihanna's Super Bowl halftime show.
If Rihanna's style was most defined by what she didn't wear during her first pregnancy (anything that obscured her bump), she was almost entirely covered up at State Farm Stadium. Rihanna has often used fashion as a tool to underscore just who has control over her body, to force a confrontation with corporeality. This once again redefined the terms.
She shone brightly in head-to-toe red. If not like a diamond, definitely like a ruby: specifically the 19.47-carat Bayco ring she had on one hand. Or like some sort of avant-garde fertility goddess, drenched in a color with all sorts of potent associations related to the female body — especially the pregnant female body. (Also, yes, Valentine’s Day, but she generally thinks more globally than a Hallmark moment.) It painted a picture that could be read from the farthest reaches of the football arena.
(It helped that all of her backup dancers formed a sea of white hoodies.)
Before the pregnancy news broke, Rihanna's first major appearance on a giant public stage since 2018 was so hotly anticipated that two different brands told me on the morning of the show that she was wearing looks they had tailored for the event — though she actually pulled a surprise last minute.
That’s power for ya. If there were two, there were probably more. (Who knows how many?) Even Oscar nominees don’t have quite so many brands willing to gamble on the chance that a celebrity’s favor will fall on them. The calculation is that the potential payoff is worth the risk.
It will be for Loewe, whose designer, Jonathan Anderson, created the surrealist leather breastplate Rihanna wore over her bodysuit and under that boiler suit (meant to symbolize flight, according to the brand), accessorized with diamond brooches and left open at the torso to free the tummy.