If you ever wondered about the allure of Rihanna and why so many people seem to be hypnotized by her stardom, Savage x Fenty Show Vol. 3 is one more example of her immaculate appeal. Unlike any other fashion show currently on the radar, RiRi’s Amazon special featured an eclectic display of Savage x Fenty models doing impressive choreographed moves on a winding uphill hall at the Westin Bonaventure Hotel in Los Angeles.
The 40-minute visual merged the celebrity of performers Bia, Normani, Jazmine Sullivan, Daddy Yankee, Ricky Martin, and Nas, with robust hues of diversity, making the experience an educational one, as well as entertaining. The fierce consortium of talent unapologetically represented women, plus-size, LGBTQ+, and various ethnicities and races. Then, there were the slow-moving shots perusing all too close to the well-defined bare chests of muscled males leaving nothing (but everything) to the imagination.
The remarkable architecture of the Westin Bonaventure, designed by John C. Portman Jr., added to voyeuristic-style shots of models serenading the moving elevators and carousel stairways. In addition to the performers, Cindy Crawford, Cara Delevingne, Gigi Hadid, Lourdes Leon, and Erykah Badu parlayed down corridors to music from the rapper Busta Rhymes and Remy Ma, smothering the hallmark Los Angeles construct with an East Coast ambience.
It was all too consuming, and nearly orgasmic, when the fashion killa herself made an appearance surrounded by a slightly spaced out mosh pit of dancers on an elevated pedestal. She gave what felt like a private dance on an elevator reminding fans why she’s the baddest…and how much we miss her dancing in music videos to a song from one of her albums. The “Take a Bow” songstress ended the extravaganza with a 360 camera pan of her standing centerstage on the rooftop of the Westin Bonaventure with her shirtless male dancers in tow.
Rihanna’s third assertion of fashion cinema was a dazzling manifestation of an otherworld imagination. It blurred the lines of all of the limiting identities that attempt to define age, race, sex, culture, and all the above.
So, even with the small minority that made an issue out of women who weren’t Black wearing braids, the ongoing debate of cultural appropriation is deemed obsolete where Black women wear straight hair, men wear lingerie, plus-size models wear scantily clad designs normally designated for smaller sizes, and LGBTQ+ models stomp out the marginalization of what can and can’t be done. Rihanna is iconic because she shows us time after time that she gives a f–k by not giving a f–k.
