Rihanna Goes 'So Naked' To CFDA Awards

Rihanna has never been known to follow fashion rules. So when she showed up at Monday’s annual Council of Fashion Designers of America awards to accept the 2014 Fashion Icon Award, the stakes were high: What could Rih possibly do to get everyone buzzing?

It was easy, actually. Queen Rih threw on a completely see-through mesh gown covered with more than 230,000 Swarovski crystals, paired it with a pink fur stole and topped it off with a matching crystal do-rag.

Getty Images

The full-frontal photos are not particularly SFW, but here, LetMeGoogleThatForYou.

“It’s so naked,” Rihanna’s stylist, Adam Selman, told Style.com. Selman himself has gained notoriety for molding his star client into a fashion icon. He recently landed a lengthy profile in the New York Times and is shopping around for a new big project, potentially a TV series or film.

Before we forget about the actual reason Rihanna was rocking the couture version of Britney’s see-through sequin body suit, let’s talk about the CFDA Awards and the 2014 Fashion Icon honor.

Legendary Vogue editor Anna Wintour presented Rihanna with the 2014 Fashion Icon Award, introducing her “tweeting buddy,” with high praise (full transcript at New York Magazine):

“She proves that incredible style can help take a talented young woman from a small island to the world stage, and along the way spark a lot of conversation about elegance and empowerment,” Wintour said.

Rihanna’s acceptance speech was short and sweet, but she touched on how she used fashion as a defense mechanism as a young girl growing up in Barbados.

“Even as a child I remember thinking, ‘She can beat me, but she cannot beat my outfit,'” she said to the crowd.

She was right: no one even came close to beating her outfit for the night.

Alexandra DiPalma is a producer for Fusion Lightworks, Fusion’s In-house Branded Content Agency.