Here's a preview of Rihanna's new Style network show.
Styled to Rock is a fashion competition reality show hosted by Rihanna, the first season of which aired in the U.K. However! It's coming to the Style network in the U.S. this year. This simply must be due to a lobby from Urban Outfitters and Nasty Gal, which would be downright bankrupt without Rihanna to base their various lines of acid wash and '90s bra tops on. There's just no way around it — anyone who wants to sell skimpy, ironic clothes to early twenty-somethings needs Rihanna right now because she keeps those things "cool."
Anyway, in spiffing up the show for U.S. audiences (which are slightly more discerning than U.K. ones, let's be honest) producers haver recruited Pharrell and Erin Wasson to mentor the 12 designer contestants on the show. Each week they'll be asked to "style an A-list star," press materials about the show explain, as they compete for the title of "America's next trendsetting designer." Note: that's not "great" but "trendsetting" — so this is basically a show about dressing celebrities who need massive amounts of attention. I'm seeing lesser versions of Beyoncé's sculpted nipple bra and Justin Bieber's creepy leather harem pants and I'm not upset about it at all — TV needs an antidote to Fashion Star, the show that tasked designers with designing for... Macy's. It remains unclear if the show will feature Project Runway-style challenges that force designers to make dresses out of cat food and so forth, or if the stars are indeed A-list enough to be able to demand real clothes made out of real fabric each time.
Pharrell, of course, founded Billionaire Boys Club and seems to be buddy-buddy with Anna Wintour, given his eagerness to appear at all the big Vogue events, so you could argue he's the Michael Kors of the Urban Outfitters-worshiping generation. Wasson is a wildly successful model who created a few collections of clothing for the brand RVCA, one fashion show for which took place in a rug store in New York City, because, Wasson said, "I want people to roll around on carpets." As opposed to having guests "sit in a chair that's hard and stagnant and in a horrible environment." (Truly it was a great show — champagne was present.) Prior to that Wasson was Alexander Wang's muse and fashion show stylist. She also has a line of jewelry called Low Luv, which is necessary for someone in her Styled to Rock role because if you're even slightly famous these days and don't have a line of something you may as well not have a Twitter account or exist.
So really, it's a pretty good bunch of fashion-involved people that the Style Network's managed to assemble here! None of them real trained designers, but would you want to see your favorite world-famous designers on Rihanna's fashion TV show? No. Probably not.
