“I don’t know if it was too much magnetic energy for me, but it sure knocked me on my ass,” she says in Paris, explaining that she often experiences the same symptoms around this time of the year, usually between touring and awards-show season. But not even adamantine willpower could overcome the exhaustion that Rihanna was feeling in that moment. The setting couldn’t have been more breathtaking-a villa overlooking Es Vedrà, the mythically charged, rocky island off the southwestern coast of Ibiza that’s said to be the third-most-magnetic place on the planet. I witnessed her pushed up against her limits just a few days earlier, when, hours before the cover shoot for this issue, she was suddenly taken ill. Since giving up her apartment in SoHo, New York, last fall, Rihanna spends most of her time in either London or Los Angeles, though to hear her tell it, she basically lives on a plane. Pulling double duty as both badass rock star and savvy businesswoman across a working orbit that spans California (home base for her new lingerie collaborators) and Europe can take a physical toll on even the most intergalactic of superstars.
It’s even tougher now that she’s not only the face of her personal brand but also the CEO of a burgeoning global beauty-and-fashion empire. Still, making those kinds of pivotal lifestyle adjustments isn’t always easy-especially if, like Rihanna, you’ve been on the celebrity treadmill since you were a teenager. “She also has this warmth, and when she shines it on you, it makes you feel pretty damn amazing!” “It’s a combination of being starstruck and being immediately put at ease,” explains Sandra Bullock.
Hanging out with Rihanna is every bit as fun as her costars in the upcoming Ocean’s 8 movie make it sound: You know you’re in the presence of a superstar, but it’s like you’re chatting with an old friend. “You better werk, girl you look gorgeous!” I do my best to play it cool, but the little fangirl inside me is freaking out. “What is that dress? Is that vintage Jean Paul Gaultier?” she asks, pausing on my profile picture, a bathroom selfie taken in a swanky Hollywood hotel. Rihanna asks if she can take a look through the photos on my app, and I oblige.
Though I have taken great pains to put together what I think is a Rihanna-worthy look- Jacquemus blouse, vintage Yves Saint Laurent tuxedo pants-it’s hard not to feel like a tarnished penny next to a freshly minted gold coin as I sidle up to her on the sofa.
“Come sit here you gotta teach me how to do this swipe thing.” Rihanna is all curled up in a cozy hotel bathrobe and has a pair of comfy Fenty Puma slides on her feet, and yet she radiates flawless glamour-hair tousled in loose waves, skin luminous. “So wait, you’re on a dating app? You don’t seem like the dating-app type,” she says as her almond-shaped green eyes peer into my iPhone.
Right now, though, there is a more pressing issue on the agenda, one that demands her full attention: Rihanna has decided that it’s time to fix my love life. There is a stack of Fenty Beauty campaign printouts piled high on her desk awaiting her approval a flood of unanswered emails from Fenty team members in various time zones, all happily waiting on her too. It’s perhaps why she doesn’t seem particularly bothered that today’s to-do list is far from done. And when you’re Rihanna, and the world is your oyster, then time is really elastic. In the dark, soundproofed environment of a recording studio, time is elastic. Her most intense bouts of creativity often come after midnight, a rhythm she picked up early in her music career. The evening panorama from the terrace is about as picture-postcard pretty as Paris gets, though at this late hour the lights on the Eiffel Tower have long since gone out. It’s a foggy spring night in Paris, and Rihanna has just wrapped up a meeting with her accountant in the penthouse suite of the Four Seasons hotel, a place that will serve as her makeshift office for the next few days. “People save for their whole lives to go on vacation there, and it’s easy to take that for granted,” she says. The singer describes her home, Barbados, as paradise.