Rihanna has made a habit of returning home to Barbados during carnival season for the annual Crop Over festival. This year’s event took place from July 4-Aug. 3, culminating with the Grand Kadooment Day Parade on Monday (Aug. 3).
That’s where you would have found Rihanna, who once again stunned in a wildly colorful, elaborate costume covered in jewels, sparkles and peacock-colored feathers. The singer, 38, walked, and danced, in the parade, blowing kisses to fans along the way and then swapped out her towering headpiece for a more manageable one before boarding a float to enjoy the festivities at a remove while she waved to fans.
According to Glamour, the costume was by celebrated Barbadian designer Lauren Astin and featured “crystal embellishments, bold jewel tones, dramatic feather detailing and a statement headpiece worthy of a carnival queen.” The outfit also had a number of bold cut-outs on the bodice — mostly cut-outs, honestly, as the eye-popping piece strategically covered bits of RihRih’s body with jewels, leaving not much to the imagination.
Crop Over is Barbados’ biggest and most vibrant carnival celebration, with roots in the 1700s as a party marking the end of the island’s sugar cane harvest. The contemporary version features weeks of music-driven parties and cultural events leading up to Monday’s Grand Kadooment Day, the massive carnival parade where thousands of citizens don their finest masks and sparkling costumes to dance through the streets of Barbados.
Though fans are still holding out for the singer’s ninth studio album, the long-awaited follow-up to 2016’s ANTI, Rih gave them a tease recently when she was a surprise guest at the final gig in Jay-Z’s run of Yankee Stadium shows, popping out at the Extra Innings Concert on July 12. She popped out to perform “Run This Town” and B–ch Better Have My Money” at the gig, her first public performance since Super Bowl LVII three years ago.
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