Rihanna’s Next-Generation Bronzers Are Redefining Sun-Kissed Skin for All

“Vacation glow” has long been shorthand for a jet-set tan, and bronzer was the way to fake it—for some. Now, the latest makeup launches are taking a full-spectrum approach.

Rihanna, as we know, hides from nothing. Fashion statements. Big business. The sun. The Barbados-born performer chases it, as the name of her debut bronzer by Fenty Beauty suggests. Released this spring, Sun Stalk’r boasts eight shades—a category-redefining breadth in keeping with the makeup brand’s inclusive approach. The campaign shows a golden RiRi sprawled out in the desert. Unfazed by the scorching climate, she turns her face squarely into the light.

We’ve come a long way from the age of one-shade-fits-all bronzer, that orange-tinged brick designed to suit, say, a freckled Lindsay Lohan. Sephora alone stocks nearly 200 variations, and the catalog is growing still. Marc Jacobs’s O!mega bronzer now comes in a burnt caramel; Lancôme’s limited-edition Le French Glow, embossed with “egalité,”
features a color-blocked palette of different tones. Priscilla Ono, Fenty’s global makeup artist, spent two years developing Sun Stalk’r with Rihanna, paying close attention to undertones: rich reds for deeper pigmented skin; cool taupes for fair. Simulating a baked tan is not the goal. “It’s more to give you this beautiful bronze effect,” Ono says, “where it looks like you’ve been in the sun in a healthy way.”

In other words, “vacation glow.” That concept rocked Europe in 1923, when a sun-kissed Coco Chanel disembarked from a Mediterranean cruise and set off a frenzy in fashionable circles. “Since antiquity, white women were supposed to be pale because it suggested that they did not have to work outside. That was a symbol of higher status,” explains Lori. L. Tharps, author of Same Family, Different Colors. But even as the suntan craze spread, she notes, there was pressure for women of color to stay lighter—which makes the current embrace of a full-spectrum glow something of a pivotal moment. Call it the Rihanna ripple effect: When an international icon relishes her burnished skin, it’s a point of validation for so many others.

Paloma Elsesser, for one, is taking a shine. The Afro-Latina model, a muse for both Fenty and Glossier, grew up indifferent to the cult of sunbathing. She was already brown; what was the point? (Dermatologists will be quick to note that UV exposure poses a danger to all skin tones.) Now, with an itinerant life unfolding across Instagram—Nigeria, Mexico, Jamaica, Spain—Elsesser embodies a fresh kind of vacation glow. “When I look at photos from summer, I’m like, ‘Damn,’ ” she says with a laugh, describing a honey-hued warmth helped along by a swirl of bronzer. “I really feel myself.”