Beyonc doesnt dress to set trends

Beyoncé’s Renaissance tour finally beamed into the United States this week, with a show on Wednesday night in Philadelphia that gives her American audience a taste of the visuals they have been craving from her 2022 house-inspired album.

The wardrobe she has worn throughout the tour’s European leg has been futuristic, flashy and camp — a seemingly never-ending progression of red and silver outfits designed to gleam and dazzle under stage lighting and between robotic frame-like arms with mirrored surfaces, drapes of sequins and rhinestones, and bodysuit and leotard silhouettes. They are armor for a war of ballroom death drops and stiletto stomps (with her army of dancers, including voguing stars like Honey Balenciaga, behind her). And they are undisputedly costumes, not fashion, though household names such as Gucci and Fendi, and emerging talents such as LaQuan Smith and Brandon Blackwood, have created them.

Working with stylists including KJ Moody, Shiona Turini, Karen Langley and Julia Sarr-Jamois, she has worn designers who hail from the country in which she is performing — Dutch couturier Iris Van Herpen in Amsterdam, Marseille-born Simon Porte Jacquemus for a stop in that city — and on Juneteenth, wore exclusively Black designers, including Ferragamo by Maximilian Davis and Off-White by Ibrahim Kamara.

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They have reinforced the sense that Beyoncé is a maximalist dresser and the consummate performer. “When I think of Beyoncé’s fashion, I tend to think of her onstage,” said Michael Arceneaux, who wrote about his devotion to the singer in his 2018 memoir, “I Can’t Date Jesus: Love, Sex, Family, Race, and Other Reasons I’ve Put My Faith in Beyoncé.” “That’s when she looks her best,” Arceneaux said.

But unlike most worldwide superstars of her generation, Beyoncé does not dress to set trends. Her fans have flocked to her shows wearing looks made in homage to her onstage ensembles — many arrive in replicas of her Loewe handprint bodysuit, and one video purports to show the performer complimenting an attendee’s look from the stage. Yet somehow, a controversy continues to brew in the Beyhive: that she is not a “fashion girl.” That she dresses to the nines but doesn’t get the credit. Or, most unforgiving, that she just isn’t stylish.

But Beyoncé’s fashion sense is what makes her one of the world’s most defiant celebrity dressers.

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In today’s symbiosis of fashion and celebrity, a musician or actor is told — usually by a powerful stylist working in conjunction with a brand’s savvy public relations or VIP head — to court fashion designers like kings. The goal is to be the vessel for the designer, or the interpreter of their vision.

Stars like Harry Styles and the Haim sisters have made wearing recognizable runway hits a cornerstone of their image; if you can wear the right piece from the right collection, it demonstrates your fluency with the rarefied world of fashion and your credibility as a cultural soothsayer. These kinds of arrangements, such as Styles’s longtime association with Gucci, can also buttress a pop star’s earnings, which are ever shrinking in the streaming age.

Beyoncé seems to have no interest in the rules of the contemporary fashion game — a trait that she shares with icons such as Tina Turner and Cher, said fashion archivist Rashida Ward. “The whole concept of being a ‘celebrity fashion girl’ — that’s a newish thing,” she said. Beyoncé often singles out a designer with whom she works extensively in each of her eras, Ward said, but the process is heavily collaborative. She co-designed a collection with Balmain’s Olivier Rousteing in March, called Renaissance Couture.

“She doesn’t look like ‘a Courreges girl.’ She doesn’t look like ‘a Balmain girl,’” Ward said. “The look is ‘Beyoncé.’” The long extensions, glittering bodysuits — everything done to her exacting demands.

Even a dedicated fashion follower would hesitate to identify the designers behind her clothes, which has become a popular online parlor game among high fashion social media. Who’s to say whether that mirrored bodysuit is made by Jacquemus or David Koma? (She rarely, if ever, tags a designer on Instagram, though her stylists are more generous with the intel, and brands eagerly share that they are the designers behind the looks.) Often, the pieces seem distant cousins of runway designs; other times, they appear to be entirely custom creations.

This makes her look both more singular and more cohesive than perhaps any other celebrity’s. The runway look that inspired her Loewe bodysuit, a flesh-tone dress with gloved black hands around it, appeared in countless magazine spreads. (It was from designer Jonathan Anderson’s fall 2022 collection.) But Beyoncé had it covered in crystals, transformed into a bodysuit, and paired with matching gloves — therefore making it her own. “She did all the it-girl stuff,” said Ward. “She’s interested in being iconic.”

Her iconography of performance is wrapped up in her reputation as a perfectionist, as a woman who works relentlessly, always hitting her mark. That attitude is one that also defines ballroom culture, to which the album “Renaissance” and the tour are a kind of love letter. The clothes are designed to emphasize the perfection and constancy of her performance, rather than some connection to contemporary trends.

But there is also a hint of something new within her remarkably consistent look — a hint of levity, in pieces such as a bee outfit by Thierry Mugler, with a matching headset. “She looks so rich, and it’s funny, but it’s also kind of campy,” said Arceneaux. “It’s really perfect.”

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