PARIS—Rihanna is finding that luxury fashion is a hard market to crack, even with her gigawatt name recognition and the backing of luxury-goods company LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton SE.
The pop star and the Paris-based conglomerate are putting their fashion joint venture, launched in 2019, on hold after sales got off to a slow start and then faltered during the pandemic.
LVMH on Wednesday said that, pending better conditions, it had made the decision to pause the venture jointly with the pop icon.
The fashion label, Fenty, failed to replicate the early success of the cosmetics line that Rihanna and LVMH launched together in 2017. The singer, born Robyn Rihanna Fenty, promoted her eponymous cosmetics brand to her vast social-media audience—91 million followers on Instagram and 102 million on Twitter. That generated huge exposure for products that stood out in the market for being tailored to a range of different skin tones.
Fenty Beauty recently launched a new skin care line, which LVMH said last month was selling well.
