Rihanna mixes high street with high fashion

Singer launches first fashion collection for River Island at London Fashion Week

London: Pop star Rihanna showed off her first fashion collection on Saturday in London, with a raunchy street-style range displayed to the sound of thumping hip-hop beats.

The Barbadian singer said it was a “dream come true” to design a line of clothes and accessories for the high street chain River Island, a range which had its worldwide first outing amid London Fashion Week and will hit the shops next month.

At the Old Sorting Office in London, the 24-year-old swapped a catwalk for a stage separated into compartments which the models moved between as hip-hop pumped out from the speakers.

The clothes on offer were street-style, with bra tops, dresses slashed to the thighs, tummy-baring tank-tops and thigh-high boots.

Rihanna came out at the end to give the designer’s traditional bow and wore a short black dress with sparking jewellery.

“I’ve wanted to design my own fashion line for a very long time,” she said beforehand. “This has been something I wanted to do ever since I started loving fashion. I got passionate about it and I just felt like every time I saw something on a rack, there was something that I would want to do to it to change it.