If there’s a common thread that ties Rihanna’s recent outfits together, it’s swathes upon swathes of fabric. She turned up at The Guggenheim for Alaïa’s spring 2025 show in cascades of crystal mesh, then debuted her Fenty Hair collection at Selfridges enveloped in a custom iteration of Jacquemus’s opening fall 2024 look. She strutted into Giorgio Baldi on the West Coast in an oversized Away NY tracksuit, then took a late-night stroll through Manhattan in a Bottega Veneta coat of Brobdingnagian proportions, clutching her Sardine bag like an emotional support animal.
Her look on Thursday night, then, was something of a curve-hugging curveball. Before LaQuan Smith debuted his spring 2025 collection in Bushwick over New York Fashion Week, he described “the ultimate LaQuan Smith woman” to Vogue as being all about “glamour and sensuality and things that are quite provocative and modern”, and while he stopped short of mentioning Rihanna by name, RiRi, it seems, knew he had her in his mind’s eye–plucking look 35 from the runway for A$AP Rocky’s 36th birthday celebrations in New York City on October 3rd.
