We’re all lamenting that Rihanna didn’t grace the Met Gala with her unrivalled presence and fashion prowess this year. People reports that she had to miss the event due to the flu. And as beauty buffs, we’re particularly heartbroken following the teasing she did of her look for this year’s event. She told Extra that her beauty look was where she planned to go big; “I’m actually just keeping it [her dress] real simple this year... very simple... I think it’s gonna come to what my makeup and what my hair is going to do. We wanna play with that.” Sob.
Still, she still served us a major hair transformation in the last few days, debuting a return to her iconic bubblegum pink hair that looks so good it’s making us sick. Hey, maybe that's why she missed the Met. She’s in recovery for such a serve.
We first got a look at the pink ’do when Rihanna was papped out and about wearing an all-black fit that made the colour even more major. Falling down her back in bouncy undone curls, the lace-front wig was styled without a parting, and instead, worn pushed back to deliver max volume and impact.
And of course, it took us right back to this look from May 2014.
The Fenty Beauty founder loves to surprise us with tweaks to her colour. Last year, she entered her blonde hair era, then warmed things up with a strawberry blonde transformation. Though cast your mind even further back to 2010, when it was all about the ‘Only Girl (In The World)’ firey red, if you want to really reminisce.
But back to 2024 Rih. The little ‘A’ peeking out on her sweater should have been a clue what she was up. Later that day, she made a surprise appearance supporting her partner at the A$AP Rocky X Puma pop-up shop at the Miami Grand Prix. Her pink hair looked very different here.
She transformed her ’do with silky curls and wore a deep side parting. It’s giving some kind of bubblegum superhero, and we’re really not mad at it.
We missed you at the Met RiRi – but this has pacified us. For now.
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Elena Chabo is Cosmopolitan UK's beauty writer, working on everything from buzzy celeb news and trending beauty, to sincere first-person reviews and engaging video content for social media. She also creates meatier features and expert-led how-to guides, for print and online. Her passion for Black beauty, textured hair, and the ways beauty interacts with culture, society, identity and relationships, quickly took over her writing career and led her into beauty journalism.
Following an MA in Magazine Journalism in 2017, she cut her teeth across various roles at Stylist Magazine, before taking on a Digital Writer role at Good Housekeeping. It was here that beauty took centre stage and she launched and ran the site's first stand-alone beauty section. Remaining at Hearst, she joined the Cosmo beauty team in 2022. Find her on LinkedIn.
