Right before Cardi B took the stage with Vogue’s creative director, Sally Singer, at the Forces of Fashion conference today—the first day of programming’s grand finale—a short video montage of some of Cardi’s fashion highlights flashed on the massive screens at Spring Studios. Even just a few seconds of looking back at some of Cardi’s most memorable looks, and it’s clear that the Hustlers star is one of fashion’s most fearless players. From that pearly Mugler number that she wore to the Grammys earlier this year to the over-the-top Thom Browne gown she wore to the Met Gala more recently, Cardi B has already sealed her reputation as an undeniable fashion icon.
She aptly summed this up herself midway through the discussion today: “Every outfit is such a risk.” Cardi touched on everything from dressing her daughter up like a little doll to the challenges that come with putting out a fast-fashion collection. And in classic Cardi fashion, there were some wacky curveballs. Why does Cardi sing the climactic song from The Lizzie McGuire Movie every time she goes to Paris Fashion Week? And what exactly do she and Bernie Sanders have in common? Read the highlights below to find out.
On Bernie Sanders:
“I always liked him. He’s been fighting for a long time for all, you know. I’m saying he’s very passionate about people. There’s some people that are like natural humanitarians. They just want to take care of the world that they love, saving the planet. They want to see equal rights. He’s been doing that for a long time.... That’s one thing I love about him. It’s a little tricky now that he’s had the heart attack because people have been trying to paint Bernie as like this little scrawny old man, which is crazy. When I met him he was actually pretty strong and very tall—he’s six one. Wow! I don’t feel like because he had a heart attack it’s a problem. I have asthma. If I have an asthma attack, is my career over? I don’t like that.
“He wants free health insurance and free education. There’s certain things that are just common sense. Those are the things that I see in my neighborhood, how minorities get treated and the things that we see in the news. I’m sick of it. When are things going to change? When I was a little girl, I didn’t want none of the celebrities that I liked to curse. I wanted to think that they were angels. That’s what I want to look up to [in someone] as a president. I want you to be an angel, and I want to feel secure. I want to know that you care about my people and that we get equal rights.”
On raising her daughter:
“Well, I always say this: I will always keep my daughter humble. She’s still going to the Bronx, she’s still going to Washington Heights, she’s going to my grandmother’s house. I’m always going to tell her to not brag about the things she has because some of her friends, cousins, and family members, they don’t have. I want to let her know that you might be rich, you might grow up in a certain type of neighborhood, but there’s going to be certain people who are not going to look at you as rich, and you might be in a class full of people that might not look like you, and they’re going to pick on the way that you look, on your features, and on your hair, and you’ve got to be very confident. You need to know that this country sometimes feels like it wasn’t made for us. It gives us a certain type of freedom but not a complete freedom. Even though you’re rich some people are going to just see you as a minority.”
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On getting invited to Paris Fashion Week:
“I’ve worked so hard to be able to get to these shows. When it comes to the fashion industry, they don’t care if you’ve got number one hits, all the awards. If you just ain’t stylin’ right, they just ain’t gonna invite you to their shows, they just don't care. You’ve got to be into it, and you’ve got to have a sense of style. It’s something that you’ve got to prove. It’s taken years for me to prove it, and I’m finally where I want to be. Has anyone seen that Hilary Duff movie [The Lizzie McGuire Movie]? There’s a song in it that anytime I go to an event that I’ve always wanted to go to I always play it in my head. It goes, ‘Hey now, hey now, this is what dreams are made of.’ That’s how I feel every single time that I get invited to these fashion events because we work our ass off, we make sure everything is on point, from the amount of cleavage shown to the way that clothing is tailored.”
On working with her stylist, Kollin Carter:
“We started working together when I did this photo shoot for The Fader. That’s when I met him, and I was a little hard on him. I have a certain type of body—I’m skinny, but I’ve got big boobs and a big butt, so certain things just make my body look a little weird and everything. I liked how he was just so determined. He has a solution for everything. We’ve worked with each other ever since. We both give our input. Sometimes we don’t agree on certain types of things, but we end up doing it and it looks great. If it doesn’t get the reviews that we like, or if we don’t think that it photographed well, it’s okay. We just do another outfit. It’s fun, clean, and classy, and sometimes I got to be a little slutty because I still got to show my body a little bit. To me every outfit is such a risk.”
On coordinating her outfits with her husband, Offset:
“His style is real Hypebeast. It’s good Hypebeast, but sometimes we disagree on certain things. We be going at each other because sometimes it’s like, Who dressed better? It’s been getting a little intense, but when an outfit is really good, we give each other so many compliments. We’re each other’s biggest fans. And when it comes to the red carpet, there have been certain times that we don’t know, [we don’t] communicate with each other, so when we’re together on the red carpet, the outfits don’t look good. We started speaking more about it, like, ‘Hey, if I’m going to wear an extravagant outfit, you should be really cut clean.’ If he’s going real extra, I’ll go real clean.”
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On dressing her daughter:
“It’s been my new hobby lately. When I shop I usually put the outfits on my bed and spread them out and say, ‘This would look good with this type of coat,’ and now I’m not even doing it as much. I’m just doing it with her stuff, and I’m just waiting for these fur coats to come in. I’m going to be styling, but yeah, it’s so fun. It’s like dressing a doll all over again.”
On Fashion Nova:
“I've been wearing Fashion Nova for a long time. I like Fashion Nova a lot because it just fits my body perfectly all the time. I think it’s made for girls with my type of body. I always felt like I had a very good relationship with them to the point that I felt like I could do business with them. Because they treat me like family. When it comes to this industry, you got to make sure that people generally care for you and they just don’t see you as a money sign.... So I collaborated with Fashion Nova for my first collection. It was very difficult because we started designing and I was seven months pregnant. I was restricted from traveling, so I had to see a lot of clothes through FaceTime, so I couldn’t feel the material. I couldn’t see how it translated in person. For my second collection I feel like I listened to a lot of people online. They wanted it to be more sexy. You know, Fashion Nova do a lot of sexy, a whole lot of boobs showing. So I was like, All right, let me do that—but my way. Even though we were happy with it, there were a lot of times that I was really frustrated because, you know, we had to work on a certain type of budget, They could be sold at a certain type of price. And then some of the material I hated. And then when you see the sketching, when it comes back you’re like, Who the hell picked this? And they’re like, You picked it. That was such a challenge.”
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On the prospect of having her own brand:
“If I ever do that, it will have to be at a certain point in my music career where I don’t have to prove myself. Rihanna is at the point of her career that she doesn’t have to release music. She already proved herself and put her time in, as well as Kanye. When it comes to designing, it’s not a three-day, four-day thing. You really have to be there every single day, making sure that everything is going fine. Nobody does the work better than you, so you have to be there.”
On what she’s learned about herself as she’s gained success:
“I used to feel like I was so cutthroat and to the point, like nobody can finesse me, I know this shit. Nowadays my husband is telling me, ‘You’re too nice to people. That’s why you’re always getting into lawsuits. That’s why people are always taking more money than you expected them to take from you. You’re too nice. You need to understand that this is a business. Business, business, business.’ It’s hard for me because that’s not how my parents raised me. I cannot just see you as a colleague or as an associate. I always make people like my family, but certain people don’t see you as your family, they see you as a business. They see you as money. I thought I was so hard and cutthroat, but I’m really not. I have to keep evolving and be more strict.”
Go Behind the Scenes at the 2019 Forces of Fashion Conference:
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See How Cardi B’s Showstopping Couture Wardrobe Came Together for the Grammys: