When Rihanna steps out into the cold, she doesn’t throw on any old coat. She prefers outerwear that could double as a glamorous sleeping bag.
Who cares if an oversized train drags behind her on the floor or that she’s so insulated she can’t lift her arms. She’s Rihanna—she has two back-ups in the car and an assistant there to help.
More often than not, Rihanna’s mega-coats come with a quadruple-digit price tag. (Think Saint Laurent couture, Raf Simons, Ella Boucht.)
They can be made from plushy velvet or slick puffy fabric, but they’re always e-nor-mous. These aren’t coats that you have to worry will hide your outfit—they are the outfit.
Rih’s penchant for XXL outerwear is almost the wintertime/extreme-air-conditioning equivalent of the red-carpet confection dresses she’s known to wear. Why she loves them so much isn’t immediately clear—does she need supersize pockets to stash her collection of restaurant wine glasses, or do her hands just get really, really cold all the time? It’s an enigma that doesn’t have a straightforward answer. But also, that’s not the point: Rihanna embodies the concept of “dressing for yourself,” wearing what she wants when she wants just because she can, whether it’s a bedazzled Gucci bodysuit at Coachella or a poufy Molly Goddard gown for a Tuesday or, yes, jackets the size of a bedspread.
When she wears these coats, Rihanna looks both glamorous and unbothered, as only a multiplatinum pop star and global beauty mogul could. They’re a sartorial barrier distinguishing her from the world around her, an exercise in prestige fashion. Admit it: If you could drop a few thousand dollars on a larger-than-life puffer coat to feel like Rih, you probably would. But the good news is you don’t have to.
With at least three full months of cold still ahead, consider this our petition that everyone deserves at least one outrageous piece of outwear. So throw hazard to the wind and shop these #BigCoatEnergy outfit-makers, below. Rihanna would be proud.
