Savage X Fenty Brand Guidelines: Rihanna’s 2018 Online Lingerie Label & Its Runway Shows

A joint venture that began online.

Savage X Fenty launched on 11 May 2018, FashionUnited reported on the label’s first anniversary, as a partnership between the singer Rihanna and TechStyle Fashion Group, the company behind Fabletics, JustFab and ShoeDazzle. FashionUnited later called it a joint venture. The Fenty in the name is Rihanna’s surname, and the label sits beside her beauty brand, Fenty Beauty, which FashionUnited said follows the same principle of inclusion. Trade reports print the name both as Savage X Fenty and as Savage x Fenty.

It started as an online-only brand, and its launch was built as a piece of social media. The label’s entry in the Shorty Awards, which gave it an Audience Honor in Fashion, says the whole pre-launch tease ran on Instagram and began a month before launch with an ambiguous post from Rihanna. She then followed a verified @savagexfenty account that had no photo, no content and no bio. The entry says that blank account reached 17,000 followers in 24 hours. English Wikipedia adds a pop-up shop in Brooklyn, New York, open for the first two days.

FashionUnited reported that shoppers waited for hours to reach the site on launch day, and that the 40-piece debut collection sold out within a month. A year later it counted more than 800 styles, shipping to 210 countries, and sales through the online retailers Asos and Zalando. It also described a membership scheme called Xtra VIP, offering deals and early access.

Runway shows made for the screen.

Runway shows followed the launch. In July 2018 the visual artist Philippa Price announced that she was its creative director, The Fader reported. Her work with Rihanna went back to a 2016 Brit Awards performance, and she had directed videos for Pharrell and St. Vincent.

The first show followed in September 2018 at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, during New York Fashion Week. The Cut described a runway that doubled as a stage, a set styled after a bio-dome with a desert section and a hydroponic greenhouse, and models who moved as dancers, in choreography by Parris Goebel. English Wikipedia credits Goebel with the choreography of the shows. The next three were filmed as television specials for Amazon Prime Video, Billboard reported in 2022, and English Wikipedia dates those volumes to September 2019, October 2020 and September 2021.

The range widened alongside them. A first men’s collection, an 11-piece capsule with the brand ambassador Christian Combs, arrived in October 2020, with Black Enterprise describing boxers and swim trunks with the logo around the waistband. WWD reported a move into sportswear in 2022 under the creative direction of the designer Adam Selman.

In 2019 FashionUnited listed sizes from XS to 3XL and seven shades of nude, and noted that Savage X Fenty was not the first brand to call for a more inclusive lingerie market. The market analytics firm Edited told it that US and UK retailers had increased their size-inclusive lingerie styles by 34 percent since the label appeared. Bralettes and triangle bras made up 42 percent of the range at that point, according to the same analysis, and push-up bras 6 percent.

Stores came after nearly four years online. Rihanna announced the first locations in January 2022: Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Houston, Philadelphia and Washington, DC. Billboard noted that the preview showed colourful wallpapers, and The National placed the first boutique on the Las Vegas Strip. Retail Dive counted seven stores by June 2023 and nine by September 2024.

How the category presents itself.

Hosiery and high-street lingerie are sold at close quarters. A pair of tights is usually bought in a flat packet or from a hanger, a bra from a rail and a vest from a folded stack, so much of the design work falls on the things around the garment: the pack, the hook, the shelf and the shop front. Type on a legwear packet has a practical job to do, since it has to carry a name, a style and a size in a small space.

Retail shapes the look as much as print does. Some names in this field are found mainly in their own shops, often in shopping malls and on high streets, where the shop front is the largest sign the brand has. Oniverse, the Italian group behind Calzedonia and Intimissimi, says it sells its collections exclusively through single-brand stores. Others reach customers through department stores, or as a concession inside another retailer: in 2005 the trade paper TextilWirtschaft reported Intimissimi shop-in-shops opening inside Victoria’s Secret in the United States.

Colour is often seasonal. A wall of tights or swimwear arranged by shade can work as display and stock at once, and a change of season can change the look of a shop without touching its fittings. Plain folded basics pull the other way, relying on cut, material and label rather than pattern, so that the same shop can hold both a bright display and a quiet one.

This guide sets out what can be checked about each brand: who founded it, who owns it and what it says about where its products are made, with the company’s own claims marked as such. The palettes and specimens here are our own.

Investors, a settlement and a change at the top.

Outside investors followed. Retail Dive reported a Series B round led by L Catterton, and FashionUnited dated it to February 2021. A Series C round followed in January 2022, led by Neuberger Berman, with earlier backers including Avenir, Advent International, Sunley House Capital and Jay-Z’s Marcy Venture Partners, and new ones including LionTree, the Abu Dhabi Growth Fund and Multiply Group. Forbes Australia put Rihanna’s stake at 30 percent in June 2023.

Reports differ on TechStyle’s place. WWD wrote in November 2022 that the brand had separated from TechStyle, while Retail Dive in September 2024 called TechStyle Fashion Group its owner and said it followed the same membership model online. English Wikipedia names the parent as Lavender Lingerie, LLC, and the base as El Segundo, California.

The membership model also led to a lawsuit. In November 2022 WWD reported that the company had agreed to settle a consumer protection lawsuit filed by three California district attorneys’ offices and the Santa Monica City Attorney’s Office. The suit claimed that VIP members were not properly told about recurring charges, that consent for automatic renewal fees was not properly obtained, and that prices and the use of store credit were advertised incorrectly. The settlement included civil penalties and restitution to California VIP members. The company said it had settled, agreed to make clarifying changes to its website and would provide refunds to eligible California customers.

The top job has changed too. Rihanna gave up the chief executive role in June 2023, staying on as executive chair, and Hillary Super, formerly of Anthropologie Group, succeeded her, Retail Dive and TheIndustry.fashion reported. In August 2024 FashionUnited reported that Super would become chief executive of Victoria’s Secret that September, and Retail Dive said Savage X Fenty was searching for a successor.

Distribution widened at the same moment. Nordstrom became the brand’s first US retail partner in August 2024, Retail Dive reported, and in September a shop-in-shop opened in the lingerie department at Selfridges on Oxford Street in London, its first physical presence abroad. The Selfridges range included the Soft N’ Savage, Savage Not Sorry, Mod Poppy and Sheer X collections, in bra sizes 32A to 42D and other sizes XS to 4X, FashionUnited reported.

For a design guide, Savage X Fenty shows how a label can make its launch and its shows the main visual statement, with the founder’s own account as the first shop window. Compare Victoria’s Secret, the label FashionUnited set it against in 2019, and SKIMS, another founder-led American underwear name. For this guide we use ink, oxblood and clay with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Savage X Fenty’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.