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It’s all nicely and good to fee John Galliano to create a waist-obscuring and outrage-inducing corset, however absence, as we learnt earlier this week, is probably essentially the most intense spectacle of all. That was a lesson made apparent when Rihanna suffered a sudden bout of the flu and did not arrive on the Met Gala: a professional—although not totally surprising—sabbatical for somebody who has spent the previous few years teasing spectators and journalists with an accretion of eleventh-hour entrances.
That the Met Gala’s unofficial princess had been rendered bed-bound for an occasion themed round “sleeping beauties” was an ironic and unlucky accident. Notably for the wild card, London-based designer Jawara Alleyne, who was rumored to have created Rihanna’s 2024 Met Gala look. (He's now promoting a line of T-shirts printed with the exact second the musician first endorsed his work, taking what would have been the last word anointment into his personal palms.)
However each sleeping magnificence is sooner or later revived from hibernation and Rihanna final night time emerged from her sick mattress on the Carlyle Lodge in Manhattan—at least three days after she was attributable to be photographed on the Metropolitan Museum of Artwork—wearing a hoodie, a bias-cut skirt and a jumbo-sized Chanel purse. At this level, it's apparent that Rihanna operates in her personal time zone—as soon as arriving on the 2023 Met Gala solely after the cockroaches, and scheduling her cowl interviews to happen at 3:26 a.m.—however think about this additional proof that she maybe owes you nothing extra.
This text first appeared on British Vogue.