http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/30/fashion/rihannas-fenty-line-debuts-in-paris-and-receives-a-pop-star-welcome.html 2016-09-29 11:31:26 Rihanna’s Fenty Line Debuts in Paris and Receives a Pop Star Welcome Fashion — and fans — paid court to the pop star and the look she described as Marie Antoinette “if she was going to the gym.” === PARIS — On an upper floor of the Nice nails, a reporter said to one model, a heavy-lidded Dane named Frederikke Sofie. “Oh, they’re not mine,” she replied. Not for the first time, and surely not for the last, the thought occurred that the European fashion shows, with their ritual peregrinations from palace to palace, were not so different from the French court, which took its pomp and circumstance on the road at regular intervals. The thought occurred with particular force Wednesday evening because Rihanna Attendants were barking out orders — “Nails, nails, we need nails! We’re losing nails!” — but Rihanna was serene and unusually humble for a reigning monarch, which, for the evening at least, she was. “I would never expect that I would be allowed in Paris to show a collection this early as a designer,” she said. “That wasn’t a thing that I expected at all. I couldn’t believe — I still right now can’t believe it happened.” She added, sweetly, “Thank you for putting those butterflies back in my stomach.” Nerves notwithstanding, Rihanna’s was, perhaps predictably, the most hyped show of the evening, so oversubscribed that two shows had to be staged, one immediately following another. Fans gathered outside the hotel gates, behind police barricades, and more hovered outside the Four Seasons Hotel George V a half mile away (though if she was actually staying there, who knows). When the time came, the show went out on a live stream like a stylized music video (the soundtrack was “violins mixed with trap beats,” The reaction from those outside the court, from the queen’s self-appointed subjects, was rapturous (on Twitter, a sampling: “I love this”; “LIFE GIVING”; “The look of the century”), and even among the stiff-lipped editors inside, some fun was being had, though none more so, it seemed, than by Rihanna herself, who came through with a giant smile on her face: Let them eat brocade! Earlier in the evening she had been asked if she related to Marie Antoinette and she nodded. “She was very dramatic,” she replied.