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New York Times Vanessa Friedman has written about why Beyoncé music superstar is not a fashion icon like her pop nemesis Rihanna.
Prompted by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s decision to feature seven of Beyoncé’s outfits in an exhibition in the Legends of Rock section, Friedman delves into the singer’s lack of influence on fashion, citing her failed fashion line House of Deréon as evidence:
Beyoncé hasn’t moved, or influenced, the direction of fashion writ large in the way that, say, Rihanna, the winner of this year’s CFDA Fashion Icon award, has. (See, for example, the luxe athletic pieces peppering collections like Pucci, Balmain and Tom Ford.) She doesn’t wear things and spark a million trends, like Madonna once did with her jeweled crosses and lace minis, not to mention her bullet bra corsets. She doesn’t cause items to sell out overnight, like wee Prince George.
She doesn’t worm her way into designers’ imaginations, the way Patti Smith and Courtney Love did. Her stylist has not become a well-known name in his own right, the way Nicola Formichetti has moved from working with Lady Gaga (who also won the CFDA Fashion Icon award in 2011) to becoming the creative director and frontman of Diesel.
Her megafame could not even sustain her own fashion brand, House of Deréon, which appears to have been suspended (the Facebook page links to a website, houseofdereon.com, which the Internet says “cannot be found,” though some jeans and shoes are still sold on third-party sites), unlike, say, that of Jessica Simpson, which has revenues of about $1 billion, according to Forbes. Li & Fung, which owns House of Deréon, did not respond to requests to clarify the situation.
Yet Beyoncé has at least 13.5 million Twitter followers and 14.4 million Instagram followers, all of whom are treated to selfies of her in assorted outfits both on duty and off. In her surprise megahit “visual album” last December, she wore garments from multiple different name brands, from Maxime Simoens to Ulyana Sergeenko and 3.1 Phillip Lim. On her “Mrs. Carter” tour, she modeled looks from Pucci, while on her current “On the Run” tour with her husband, Jay Z, she is wearing costumes by Atelier Versace, Alexander Wang and Diesel.
Her regular appearances in Givenchy at the Met ball (2013 and 2014, as well as the above-mentioned 2012) end up as featured red-carpet moments everywhere, including most recently on the cover of Vogue’s Met ball special — a cover that, granted, she shares with Rihanna, but she has had two other covers of the main mag all to herself. Beyoncé should, by all objective measurements, be a fashion influencer extraordinaire.
So how is it that all ages of women want to be like her, but that does not include, for any of them, what is normally the easiest way into the fantasy: dressing like her? How is it she drives audiences into stadiums but not clients into stores? It looks like a paradox.
If fact, let’s call it the Beyoncé Paradox. And here’s the thing: I think it is actually a construct. One that has been strategically made.
After all, by opting to build her celebrity on a carefully chosen set of proprietary symbols — in this case, smile and hair and body (and voice, of course) — as opposed to a carefully constructed, apparel-related look, Beyoncé & Company have ensured that the only brand that really has any real staying power is brand Beyoncé; that everything she is selling comes back to her. Spreading the wealth, so to speak, among so many designers, which at first looks like an effort to woo the fashion world, actually works to create a situation in which no one name is permanently associated with her other than her own. It’s a question, as it always is, of power and cui bono. And cui bono here is her.
It has become conventional wisdom that fashion is a platform that is increasingly crucial as either a springboard to stardom (see: Kerry Washington and Lupita Nyong’o, both of whom have discussed the red carpet as a key tool in an actress’s arsenal) or a way to sustain a career beyond stardom (see: Kate Hudson and Sharon Stone). But what the Beyoncé Paradox suggests is that this may not, in fact, be entirely true. Because lose the “fashion,” and what do you have left?
