That much was clear on Wednesday night, when the singer and entrepreneur staged a show for her lingerie line, Savage x Fenty, at New York Fashion Week.

It was a lush, surreally Edenic performance piece, in which dancers and models prowled, whirled, and ran, laughing, across a grassy set strewn with fountains, plants growing under fluorescent lights, and geodesic domes.

All 17 minutes, which you can watch on YouTube, are mesmerizing.

Runway shows are an odd tradition. They cost a ton of money, but their appeal is fairly limited to fashion wonks. Much of the clothing doesn’t even go into production. It sometimes seems like a fashion show evaporates the second it’s done.

But this Savage x Fenty presentation is worth paying attention to because Rihanna has emerged as a leader in the world of consumer products, and has made diversity part of her brand’s DNA, rather than deploying it as a one-off marketing tactic. Her Fenty Beauty collection became a smash hit in large part because it launched with 40 shades of foundation — something that should be standard, but isn’t, as many makeup brands ignore women of color when formulating products. Just a few months later, a slew of major makeup brands had followed her lead.

And with this particular fashion show, Rihanna accomplished a few things. She put inclusivity front and center, by hiring a group of performers and models that was diverse in terms of race and, notably, size. And she offered an alternative to the cheery, homogenous vision of female sexuality put forth by the best-known lingerie brand in America, Victoria’s Secret.