Known for her shock tactics on stage, Rihanna’s new collection with River Island was frankly frightful, but not for any of the right reasons.
With prices such as sixty quid for a denim jacket that looks like you got it from your dad and thirty five pound for a swimsuit last seen on Pam Anderson in the 90s (and let’s face it, if you don’t have inbuilt flotation devices, you’re not going to fill it out quite right) the line has left many with distinctly disappointing feelings.
The line is at once outdated and too forward thinking, both understated and outlandish and just frankly un-wearable. The pieces show simply no cohesion, who pairs a transparent crochet mini skirt with a tie dyed bra top? I can guarantee we won’t be seeing the style crew in Willow wearing a ‘culotte’ dress, a word I had sincerely hoped the fashion world had forgotten by now. The line jumps from bright reds to strangely nauseous greens. Let’s face it, for a girl who makes a living out of looking like a million bucks, you wouldn’t buy this line at Poundland. How on Earth did RiRi get it so wrong?
From Kelly Brook to Emma Watson to Tulisa, it’s become the vogue for celebrities to sell their style soul to the masses, and who can blame them? When the celebs get it right, they get it very right, just look at Jessica Simpson: despite a failed reality show based on a failed marriage, she certainly found success in her $750 million a year clothing line.
But let’s face it, for every Victoria Beckham and Kelly Brook there are another 100 Lily Allens (remember the neon ball gowns from New Look?). Sometimes the lines fail because they simply don’t resemble what you’d expect from your style icon.
Take Beyoncé’s House of Dereon collection; a collaboration with her mother that showcased embarrassing Ed Hardy-esque tshirts. Where was the glitter, the sequins and the look-at-my-fabulous-bottom shorts? The offering left a sour taste in the mouth of girls who’d hoped to emulate Queen B’s fabulous style. But then there are the celebs who don’t realise that people simply don’t want to look like them. Just take Avril Lavigne’s Abbey Dawn collection that emulated everything you hated about your 14 year old self, and that no current teen would be caught dead in, it’s just far too PunkyFish.
Many feel that this vast disconnect from success comes from the fact that most of these big names don’t have any real involvement in the products they’re stitching their name into. The Kardashian Kollection, supposedly the brainchild of the famously alliterated sisters, was in fact created by Bruno Schiavi.
It doesn’t help that many of these celebrities are teaming up to create collections with brands that are so far removed from their style that you wonder what went through the executive’s heads when they signed the contract. Beth Ditto’s collection for plus sized retailer Evans fell like the dominoes she had printed on the highly unflattering leggings, featured in a collection that appeared to have forgotten all semblance of what the usual Evans audience is. Celebrities aren’t selling their clothes for a passion to share their style vision; it’s money, plain and simple. A recent court case revealed that Zooey Deschanel was pipped to receive a cool $2 million up front for using her name and likeness, and much more if the line took off. This money-grabbing mentality has left the high street saturated with sub-par style from the z-list trying their luck.
Despite finding sell-out success with her recent MAC Cosmetics collection, the colours were generic and easily found in a better quality at a much lower price elsewhere even within the MAC collections. When it comes down to it, Rihanna’s not suited to life on this side of the sewing machine.
As time goes on more and more celebrities from further down the alphabet with even more tenuous claims to fame are releasing clothing lines. It’s only a matter of time until the announcer from Channel 4 releases his own line. The time has come for the celebrity fashion wannabes to put down their sketchbooks and step away from the catalogues. They should leave the designing to the real designers and maybe try their hands at modelling the clothes instead. Beyonce certainly found more success wearing clothes rather than designing them when recently fronting H and M’s summer collection. The best designers are the ones that don’t treat fashion as a hobby; there’s a reason the biggest style icon celebs are the ones with a quiet stylist in tow.