Popstar-turned-designer Rihanna has so far been one of the main protagonists of New York Fashion Week: she launched last week in the Big Apple her Fenty Beauty makeup line, while yesterday evening her Fenty X Puma runway took place.
Her S/S 18 show featured what you may expect, that is mainly glamorous athleisure - including neon high-rise maillots, scuba inspired streetwear, body-con motorcycle race suits, crop tops in high-visibility colours and mesh knickers - not to be recommended for the gym, combined with more wearable separates such as shorts, nylon track pants and anoraks that may be used for less intensive and more urban routines.
Accessories featured ankle strapped stiletto thong sandals, mules with Perspex heels, and thigh high boots that looked like the motocross version of Vêtements and Manolo Blahnik's boots.
Taking place at the Park Avenue Armory, the show, featuring a millennial generation cast, opened with moto-cross stuntmen jumping over the mountains of pink sand arranged on the runway.
Those mountains must have provoked in the minds of some fashion critics and fans a déjà-vu moment: the bright pink dust mountain range on the set was indeed reminiscent of Prada's towering purple sand dunes in its S/S 2015 show in Via Fogazzaro.
Now we have seen mountains of dust, stones and debris as art installations, so this is not the first time sand peaks are employed for sets and settings. Besides, you may argue, this is just a concept or an idea, and you can't copyright an idea.
Yet in Prada's case you should bear in mind that all sets and settings for the fashion house's shows are designed by Rem Koolhaas' OMA and they can easily be tracked on the studio's site under the tab "Work" (in this case the project also falls under the scenography category). So Prada's set is not just any abandoned desert scene featuring mounds of purple sand, but it is a proper architectural installation/project that was made in this case employing 150 tons of artificial sand made of quartz, baked in ovens to achieve the right shade of purple.
The conclusion? Rihanna may say this is a coincidence or she was channelling D12's "Purple Hills" ("I've been so many places, I’ve seen so many faces, but nothing compares to these blue and yellow, purple hills"; mind you Prada's hills were actually purple and hers were pink...), but next time her team should check out copyrights not just for what regards clothes, but sets and settings as well.
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