Today Rihanna announced the return of her Fenty x Puma collaboration with a simple message posted to Instagram: “She’s back.”
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While the musician turned mogul’s laid-back announcement may have been predictably Rihanna, the news itself is anything but predictable. Her relationship with Puma stretches back almost a decade: First joining the brand as creative director in 2014, she then released a series of sell-out sneakers and staged a number of shows at New York Fashion Week, receiving positive reviews from critics and customers alike. Her most recent collection for Puma was released in 2017, with the collaboration going on an unannounced hiatus while Rihanna pursued other projects.
In 2019, Rihanna launched Fenty, her ready-to-wear line with LVMH, becoming the first Black woman to launch a luxury line with the heavyweight fashion conglomerate; two years later the brand shuttered amid reports of declining sales. So far, no further details of what the new collaboration with Puma will include—or, indeed, when it will arrive—have been shared publicly.
During her previous tenure at Puma, Rihanna quickly established a handful of style signatures that lent a more playful twist on the athleisure staples dominating the market during the early 2010s, including chunky-soled sneakers, brightly colored bodysuits, oversized graphic hoodies, and thigh-high boots. While the star enlisted a select group of friends to model for the brand over the years—Cara Delevingne, Slick Woods, and Travis Scott among them—Rihanna was very much the face of the brand and its most effective ambassador. Whether she’ll remain at the center of the Fenty x Puma universe for its reprise remains to be seen.
The announcement comes during what has already been an eventful year for Rihanna. The star made a triumphant return to the stage with her hotly anticipated Super Bowl halftime show in February. Marking her first solo performance in seven years, she reeled off a medley of her greatest hits while wearing a bold red boiler suit and breastplate by Jonathan Anderson for Loewe, along with a floor-length Alaïa puffer coat that many interpreted as an homage to the late André Leon Talley. (The most headline-grabbing aspect of the performance, however, turned out to be her playful reveal that she is currently pregnant with her second child.) Back in January, Rihanna also received her first Oscar nomination, earning a best original song nod for her track “Lift Me Up” from Black Panther: Wakanda Forever; it was recently confirmed that she would perform the song at the ceremony on March 12.
So what, exactly, can we expect from the return of Fenty x Puma? While today’s cryptic announcement offered few clues, if the previous collections are anything to go by, expect Rihanna to tap into the current zeitgeist for skin-baring styles—as well as to offer a more inclusive vision for the brand, in keeping with the diverse casting of her runway spectaculars for Savage x Fenty. With the experience of heading up a luxury brand for LVMH under her belt (by all accounts, the musician was involved in even the most granular aspects of the design process during her time running Fenty), Rihanna will approach her vision for Fenty x Puma with both fresh eyes and a new well of experience—so don’t be surprised if there’s an aesthetic overhaul from its previous iteration.
Keep your eye out for pieces prioritizing comfort and flexibility too. After reinventing maternity style in everything from vintage Chanel to copious amounts of body jewelry while awaiting the birth of her son last year, one imagines Rihanna will want to make sure there are looks that are suitable for the star herself to wear while she’s expecting baby number two.
As for the finer details of what the collaboration might bring, we’ll have to wait and see. But in the meantime, the news that Rihanna is returning to the fashion sphere is plenty good enough.
This article first appeared on Vogue.
