When ESSENCE’s March/April cover star Beyoncé released Cécred haircare, she debunked the myth that women who wear wigs don’t have healthy hair. “That’s some bull**** because it ain’t nobody’s business,” she said on Instagram. However, as soon as Rihanna announced Fenty Hair, pumping around in a flipped blonde pixie cut, fans still questioned if the Bajan billionaire’s new cut was, too, a wig.
Days later, a Fenty Hair ad showed her hair stylist shampooing her pixie, stirring up talk by blurring the lines between wig and real even more. “I would say the most iconic hair era for me [is] definitely short black pixie,” Rihanna tells ESSENCE at her Fenty Hair event in Los Angeles. Turns out, the beauty mogul’s new spin on her 2008 Disturbia cut was a soft launch for her shortest style to date: the big chop!
Axing off her suburban bleached pixie for natural curls, Rihanna maintained the honey color she’s been drawn to this year (cue her Vogue China and Perfect magazine covers). A rare look we can credit to her legendary hair stylist Yusef Williams (paired with rose-toned makeup by Priscilla Ono and a neutral manicure), her curly cut was styled with the Fenty Beauty Homecurl Curl-Defining Cream, Gelly Type Strong Hold Gel, and Controlling Type Hair-Thickening Edge Control.
Hiding the chop for who knows how long, (last week her viral “retired” moment was accompanied by a braid down) wigs and weaves still remain in the Fenty Hair founder’s vocabulary. “I wear different types of weaves,” Rihanna says, referring to how often she switches up her hair looks. In short– we can expect the mogul to be using her new haircare brand to keep her coils healthy– whether she rocks them full out or tucked under stylish braids, wigs, and sew-ins.