Thank heavens for Rihanna.
During an on-stage chat at the Vogue Fashion Festival in Paris on Friday, Bella Hadid admitted that she was never comfortable strutting her stuff in lingerie on the catwalk — that is, until the Savage x Fenty founder came along.
“Rihanna’s amazing. For me, that was the first time on a runway that I felt really sexy,” the 23-year-old beauty confessed to director Loïc Prigent, per WWD.
Hadid, who modeled in both the 31-year-old “Diamonds” singer’s inaugural Savage x Fenty show in 2018 as well as her second this September, also threw in a dig at Victoria’s Secret; she’s walked the runway for the lingerie giant three times.
“When I first did Fenty, I was doing other lingerie shows and I never felt powerful on a runway, like, in my underwear,” she said.
Hadid added that it was Rihanna’s instruction to “walk any way she wanted” that helped boost her confidence.
“I like being another character. I think at this point I don’t necessarily love being myself sometimes,” she explained. “Sometimes on the runway you get either nervous or you forget how your legs move.”
Hadid then opened up further about on her past mental health struggles, saying, “I feel guilty for being able to live this incredible life, have the opportunities that I do, but somehow still be depressed. It doesn’t made sense.”
In fact, she added, some of her darkest moments came when her fashion career was first taking off. “I would cry every single morning, I would cry during my lunch breaks, I would cry before I slept. I was very emotionally unstable for a while when I was working 14-hour days for four months straight as an 18-year-old. I think I just wanted to breathe a little bit,” she explained.