Watch The Queen Conquer Fashion

Nicki Minaj teams up with Fendi for an out-of-this-world collection

- Véronique Hyland

In a black crop top and leggings, padding around her house during a wardrobe fitting, Nicki Minaj is supremely disarming. She extends a hand, clarifies the spelling of your name, and offers everyone water — she presents herself as a very low-key host. You might think, “Did I really just meet the Nicki Minaj?”

To see her the next day, as she dramatically poses for Steven Klein’s camera, arching her back on a diving board, is to Get It. We’re on a Warner Bros. lot, in a faux cul-de-sac where plenty of onscreen suburban magic has been made — a prime-time wonderland where the Partridge family’s house abuts the Waltons’ and Major Nelson’s. Within spitting distance is the Friends fountain, where the cast gamboled through the opening credits. Beneath Minaj shimmers a swimming pool that has appeared in more films than most working actors. Flanked by male models, she is wearing a pink one-piece bathing suit that curves around her body like a NASCAR track. She is transformed. She is Queen. She is Megatron. She is, to quote the virtuoso verse that imprinted her on the world’s consciousness, a motherfucking monster.

And the clothes she’s wearing — along with those on the coterie of models that surround her — are part of her collection Fendi Prints On, a 127-piece collaboration with the esteemed Italian fashion house that launched last month. The collection includes a women’s, men’s, and children’s line, meaning you could, if you so desired, outfit the whole family in Minaj style.