Beyoncé’s Relationship with Fashion Has Always Been Complicated

The red carpet’s going to be packed for this one. Beyoncé has been named a co-chair of the 2026 Met Gala alongside Nicole Kidman, Venus Williams, and former Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour. This will be her first time at the Gala in 10 years.

Beyoncé's appointment is tied to the Costume Institute’s upcoming exhibition “Costume Art," which will literally trace the relationship between art and fashion.

While Beyoncé is widely celebrated for crafting some of modern music’s most iconic onstage looks, her standing within the broader fashion industry has been pretty uneven. There’s been venture after venture, but none have ever received the same cultural or commercial recognition as her artistry. Let’s look back at her time in the fashion world.

Destiny’s Child days

Before luxury brands came calling, Beyoncé’s style story began at home. Destiny’s Child’s bold, color-splashed, rhinestone-heavy coordinated looks were crafted by her mother, Tina Knowles, who leaned into glamour when the industry urged simplicity.

Knowles has since explained that label executives suggested the group tone down their aesthetic to appear more “mainstream,” pushing them toward the jeans-and-T-shirt uniform their contemporaries wore. Speaking to W Magazine, she recalled being told her designs were “too flashy” or “too Motown," which she took as thinly veiled critiques that the fashion was “too Black.” Knowles refused, choosing to highlight the group’s individuality and cultural pride instead. In hindsight, those early outfits laid the foundation for Beyoncé’s fashion ethos to always dress for yourself first.

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The business side

Beyoncé’s attempts to translate her cultural influence into retail success have been bumpier. House of Deréon, the ready-to-wear line she launched with Tina Knowles in the mid-2000s, leaned heavily on sentimental backstory but struggled to distinguish itself stylistically. Critically, it felt more mall-ready than visionary, closer to fast-fashion basics than legacy design. And maybe that was the point, but it never really materialize into anything special.

Ivy Park held higher expectations. A partnership with Topshop and later Adidas, the line, named for her daughter Blue Ivy and a park from her childhood, promised sleek athleisure that you could also wear casually. Yet it never reached the commercial heights of Rihanna’s Savage X Fenty or Kim Kardashian’s Skims. When the deal with Adidas ended in 2023, analysts and fans cited uneven marketing, unpredictable product drops modeled after her surprise music releases, and the label often not being front and center on Beyoncé as possible stumbling blocks.

Stage over street style

Onstage, Beyoncé’s fashion is untouchable. Her tour wardrobes routinely produce some of the most memorable costume moments in pop history. Who could ever forget the Thierry Mugler motorcycle corset? Or molten gold robot suit? Or the custom Loewe bodysuits and statement-making Telfar looks? Beyoncé’s two most recent tours are perfect examples of this. The Renaissance Tour leaned fully into sleek futurism, while the Cowboy Carter era reimagined Western silhouettes through a polished, high-fashion lens. In performance settings, her styling is intentional and consistently executed at the highest level.

However, offstage, that cohesion often disappears. Beyoncé’s red carpet choices and everyday style have long shuffled between safe glamour and understated practicality. Some appearances generate buzz in the wrong direction, with looks that feel overly styled or out of step with current fashion conversations. Her street style, meanwhile, tends to be functional rather than trend-setting. It leaves you wondering how one of the world’s biggest stars, if not the biggest, can be such a style icon but only in one area of her life.

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