She could be the 'Bratz Funky Fashion' version: enormous smoky-green eyes framed in glittering amber, exhibition pop-art lips glossed in pink, bewitching up-turned nose, sculpted eyebrows in a formidably high forehead and flawless caramel skin all spectacularly framed in a bouffant tease of raven-black curls, the sort of curls last seen in platinum form on the head of Marilyn Monroe. Her head pokes out from a fluffy white hotel bathrobe, like one of those 'styling heads' - a dressing-room table mannequin head on which 10-year-old girls practise make-up. 'I broke it,' she announces to the room, in her a iry, Caribbean-inflected American tone and gives an apologetic smile. On one foot she wears a sparkly silver flip-flop, a bandage on the other because this week she broke a toe (stubbed it against a chair) and is now walking with a high-camp orthopaedic aid, a black wooden cane with a duck-head silver tip. Right now, though, she is hobbling rather than tiptoeing into a suite of the 'W' hotel in Manhattan for a photo shoot.
In the video, 19-year-old Rihanna, from Barbados, cuts a startling, hyper-stylised, almost burlesque figure with a deep-slashed raven-black bob and rolled-up umbrella as a dancer's cane, tiptoeing through the rain in ballet pumps and leather hotpants. It stayed at No 1 for 10 weeks and became the longest-running UK number one by a female artist since Whitney Houston's considerably less moving yodel 'I Will Always Love You', finding Rihanna fans in the Beckhams, Naomi Campbell, Wayne Rooney and self-appointed global cool-pop detective Dame Elton John.Īs with most pop hits, 'Umbrella's success wasn't solely down to the quality (and timeliness) of the song but also to the singer's mesmerising look. It's a perfect yet strangely melancholic and moving pop song, about sheltering your friends from harm. This summer, our biblical summer of the worst floods in 200 years, found its very own soundtrack in a song called 'Umbrella', by Rihanna (featuring Jay-Z).
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