Rihanna Appears on 26 Harper's Bazaar September Covers Worldwide by Gray Sorrenti

Rihanna takes fashion industry honors, covering all 26 September 2020 issues of Harper’s Bazaar worldwide. The 32-year-old music superstar, beauty and fashion mogul, Fenty luxury brand partner to LVMH, philanthropist and activist is photographed by Gray Sorrenti with creative direction by Jen Brill.

Kahlana Barfield Brown conducts the interview, opening with a reflection of her first encounter with the megastar in 2007. Shaking hands with the staff awaiting her arrival, Rihanna embraced Brown, walking right up to her, delivering the personal hug with a more girl squad greeting. “Hey, I’m Robyn,” she said. Brown writes:

Instantly I knew what kind of person Rihanna was. Underneath the veil of this superhero-ish, ultramagnetic, über-swaggy star, Robyn Rihanna Fenty was a real one—not fake real, but real real: a Black girl who wasn’t so caught up in her own celebrity that she couldn’t recognize another Black girl on the come up. Sure, it was just a hug. But the gesture was bigger than that. Rihanna gave off the type of down-to-earth vibe you’d expect from a homegirl you’ve known since middle school.

Rihanna’s activism is well known. In 2018 the global celebrity stood in solidarity with NFL free-agent quarterback Colin Kaepernick. In her acceptance speech at this year’s NAACP Image Awareds, she called on friends and allies of Black communities everywhere to “pull up” and stand for justice.

This spring, as the Covid-19 pandemic devastated communities—and, in particular, Black communities—across the United States, her Clara Lionel Foundation, the nonprofit she founded in 2012 and named after her late grandmother Clara Braithwaite, and her 91-year-old grandfather, Lionel Braithwaite, and its partners committed more than $36 million to emergency response efforts.

Experiencing the combination of grief and outrage experienced by so many as a national watched George Floyd murdered in Minneapolis, Rihanna asked on Instagram: If intentional MURDER is the fit consequence for ‘drugs’ or ‘resisting arrest’ . . . then what’s the fit consequence for MURDER???!” 

The business angle of Rihanna’s global interview is the release of her Fenty Skin collection, created on the knowledge base of her ground-breaking makeup collection of 40 shades of foundation. Filled with gratitude for Rihanna’s very existence, Kahlana Barfield Brown concludes the interview on a note of unadulterated respect and admiration — a view of Rihanna shared by so many people. Read more Rihanna at Harper’s Bazaar.

Successfully pivoting from one industry to another is a feat very few people have been able to pull off—let alone Black women. Think about it: Other than Oprah, how many Black women have managed to take multiple industries by storm? The list is very short, and Rihanna’s name is unquestionably near the top—an achievement made more remarkable by the way she has done it. Rihanna’s swag bleeds through every product, campaign image, Instagram caption, and shade name (Cuz I’m Black).