Rihanna Revealed as Creative Director of PUMA

Rihanna took to Instagram to inundate us with references regarding her collaborative efforts with PUMA. German sportswear company recruited the Roc Nation signee for a collection that will be released in 2015. Rih has already designed products for MAC Cosmetics, River Island and now PUMA. WWD caught up with Rihanna to discuss her latest partnership with PUMA:

WWD: What’s the first thing that pops to your mind when you hear Puma?

Rihanna: My childhood. Some of the first sneakers I owned were Puma, and I wore them to death, until they had holes in them. They were sleek running shoes, I had them in pink with the black Puma stripes on the side. They also made them in Jamaican colors and so in the Caribbean it was like: What? Jamaican colors? That was the it-shoe in Barbados — if you didn’t have those, [that was it]. You know how kids are.

WWD: How does music, your core activity, relate to fashion?

Rihanna: Music and fashion go hand in hand. I think music inspires all types of arts; it inspires life, emotion, mood, and all of those things are reflected in my fashion and my style. One doesn’t go without the other.

WWD: How serious are you about your designing career? Are you ready to take it deeper?

Rihanna: I love designing. I’ve always enjoyed it. The thing I love most is the unexpected result between my brand and theirs, the combination, the marriage — it’s like having a baby, you put two things together and all of the sudden it bursts into a new thing. It’s life. At River Island I was able to see stuff come to life, draw up an idea from scratch, and that made me want to take on a bigger challenge. And MAC was an amazing experience — from creating packaging to going through textures. I would love to do cosmetics, because I love beauty: choosing colors, creating shapes. It’s like painting, you just get to play. The same way I treated MAC, I will attack Puma.