And she added a Birkin bag for good measure.
Fashion icon Cardi B is paying homage to another style star with her latest outfit. The superstar rapper channeled none other than Princess Diana with her latest outfit—and while it’s not uncommon for even non-royals and non-Grammy winners to wear a sweatshirt with bike shorts, Cardi went full-on cosplay, right down to her hair.
Yesterday, while she was out in Los Angeles, Cardi wore a white sweatshirt with a Harvard sailing motif embroidered on the chest with matching white bike shorts, chunky white sneakers, and a pair of ankle socks. The outfit matched one that Diana wore in 1997, though Cardi did add some streetwear-inflected spice with her chunky choker, Jordan sneakers, and blingy Birkin bag.
When she wore the combination back in the '90s (it was one of her go-to outfit formulas), Diana carried a croc-embossed black top-handle tote and tortoiseshell sunglasses. Cardi's beauty choices also added to the throwback vibes, especially with her cropped hair. In an Instagram Story post, Cardi said, "I came here for one thing and look what Harrison did to me," referring to her piercer and the bling in her ear.
Diana often wore (and re-wore) sweatshirts in an effort to evade the paparazzi, which often paid her less attention when she repeated outfits.
“Every single session all the media were outside camped with their stepladders, and cameras and lenses and everything,” Jenni Rivett, Princess Diana’s longtime personal trainer, explained in a 2018 interview with Yahoo!’s The Royal Box. “For her, she just found it so incredibly, ‘Why are they so interested in me when there are more important things to worry about in the world?’ It wasn’t her that asked for all this. I remember one of her strategies was that she was going to wear the same Virgin Active sweatshirt every single session.”
According to HotNewHipHop, fans think that the outfit could be a clue to new music from the rapper. Her collaborator, SZA, had a Diana-inspired album cover, which could mean that there’s another team-up in the works or that Cardi is set to follow up Invasion of Privacy with something referencing the beloved royal.
"The cover art of SZA’s 'SOS' references Princess Diana…," a fan theorized before another added, "Who else is trying to find a hidden album hint in these pictures?"