Rihanna wants to add the role of designer to her resume and Lenny Kravitz had Tom Ford in mind for his stylist character ‘Cinna’ in ‘The Hunger Games’.
The ‘Rude Boy’ hitmaker – who recently created an underwear and denim collection for Giorgio Armani – wants to be taken seriously as a designer rather than simply endorse a range of products.
Speaking on Kiis FM’s ‘On Air With Ryan Seacrest’, the songstress said, “I’m really pursuing a fashion line of my own. I want to design.
“This is also a road that I want to earn it. So I’m working with designers. Designers that I respect, and [fashion] companies that I respect. I want people to really trust me before I just say ‘Buy it, because it’s mine.'”
Rihanna’s first venture into designing came last November when she created a capsule collection for Emporio Armani Underwear and Armani Jeans – both of whom she already fronts advertising campaigns for – comprising of denim and lingerie featuring her R logo and the fashion house’s signature eagle.
The collection includes biker jackets, a canvas rucksack, two styles of jeans – skinny and tight boys cut – t-shirts emblazoned with silhouettes of the singer’s face or animal print designs and lace underwear that come in navy blue and pearl grey.
Rihanna has previously revealed she likes to shock people with her fashion choices.
She explained, “I don’t usually like typical ladylike, girly-girly stuff. It would be a look if I were to do it. I always like something that’s a little off, so it’s just not typical or expected.”
The singer-and-actor had not heard about the Suzanne Collins novel – which tells the tale of a future world where youngsters are made to fight to the death for TV audiences – but wanted to make his character as toned down as possible so he wasn’t “too outrageous”.
He said, “I’ll be quite frank with you – I didn’t know about ‘Hunger Games’ – so when I’m telling kids and they say, ‘Who are you playing?’ and I say Cinna, they go, ‘Oh you’re playing the gay guy.’
“The question was ‘How far do we go with him?’ The idea was to pull it back and create a character that’s more like a Tom Ford or an Yves Saint Laurent so he wouldn’t be too outrageous. He’s classic, he’s got his gold eyeliner. I kind of played him in the middle.”
The 47-year-old star did not go into the role thinking that the character was gay, but merely eccentric.
He added to Celebuzz, “I thought about it, and I read the book and I don’t see that he is or isn’t [gay]. He’s a designer, he’s a stylist, he has gold eyeliner-that doesn’t mean anything either way.”
