What Would Rihanna Wear for Her Harvard Humanitarian Award Ceremony
Fashion

What Would Rihanna Wear for Her Harvard Humanitarian Award Ceremony

By Christopher Barnard

UPDATE: She wore the gray deconstructed herring bone Monse.

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Life comes at you fast if you're Rihanna: one week you're in full DGAF-mode at the Grammy's with a flask and the next you're accepting the 2017 Harvard University Humanitarian of the Year award. She truly contains multitudes and that's why we love her so.

Today RiRi will alight onto the Harvard Yard to be honored for her prodigious charity work, that includes building an oncology and nuclear medicine center specializing in breast cancer in Bridgetown, Barbados (her hometown), sponsoring a scholarship program in the name of her grandparents (Claire & Lionel) for students attending US colleges from Caribbean countries, as well as supporting the Global Partnership for Education and Global Citizen Project, which facilitates education for girls and at-risk children in developing countries. Honestly, work (work work work work). Her humanitarian efforts are bountiful and the award is certainly well-deserved, putting her in the company of previous recipients like Kofi Annan, James Earl Jones and Arthur Ashe.

Seeing as this is Rihanna one must anticipate she will pull some kind of amazing look, bringing the historically fashion starved hamlet of Boston with something truly spectacular. Harvard is not totally bereft of fashion references to be sure—there are Ali MacGraw's preppy co-ed looks from Love Story, the normcore Zuckerberg hoodie, and the thinking-woman's-pink of Legally Blondes' Elle Woods, to name but a few. So in honor of Rihanna's Harvard moment we've put together some suggestions that could put her at the Head of the Charles.

Where do I begin, to tell the story of…the perfect camel coat. Even though Jenny Cavalleri was from the Wrong Side of The Tracks ©️ (ie, Rhode Island!), she pretty much wrote the book on preppy dressing. This belted camel coat with a high collar would be perfectly updated via Raf Simons' debut collection for Calvin Klein (who cares if Brooke Shields went to Princeton).

Thom Browne always has a twisted take on Cheeverish, New England codes of dressing and this look from his Spring 2017 collection is a perfect illustration. Does Harvard Yard have valet?

Rihanna is always among the first to snag a piece of Vetements phresh out the runway and this Vetements look from Fall 2017 would also be a fitting nod to hoodie connoisseur and famous Harvard drop-out, Mark Zuckerberg.

Love means never having to say you're sorry and it also means looking great in red tartan. As Ms. MacGraw so effortlessly demonstrated, a fun and totally bananas RiRi interpretation would be this Comme look from spring. Come on, if anyone could, it's Robyn Rihanna Fenty.



Or perhaps she could go full Harvard Crimson in this red-all-over look by Laura Kim and Fernando Garcia's debut collection for Oscar de la Renta.



Rihanna is a known lover of the classic Chanel suit and this pink and white version from the spring haute couture show feels ever-so-Elle Woods.


Zach Hilty/BFA.com

If there's any fabric that screams Ivy League chic it's your classic herringbone tweed and this deconstructed number from Monse is the perfect mashup of provocative and prep.