On September 7, 2018, Cardi B Nicki Minaj turned the Harper’s Bazaar Icons Party into fashion’s most infamous battleground. What was meant to celebrate style and influence during New York Fashion Week instead erupted into a global spectacle, as the Cardi B Nicki Minaj Harper’s Bazaar clash eclipsed every runway, red carpet, and headline that season.
On September 7, 2018, Cardi B Nicki Minaj turned the Harper’s Bazaar Icons Party into fashion’s most infamous battleground. What was meant to celebrate style and influence during New York Fashion Week instead erupted into a global spectacle, as the Cardi B Nicki Minaj Harper’s Bazaar clash eclipsed every runway, red carpet, and headline that season.
September 7, 2025
On September 7, 2018, Cardi B Nicki Minaj turned the Harper’s Bazaar Icons Party into fashion’s most infamous battleground. What was meant to celebrate style and influence during New York Fashion Week instead erupted into a global spectacle, as the Cardi B Nicki Minaj Harper’s Bazaar clash eclipsed every runway, red carpet, and headline that season.
Both women arrived dressed to dominate.
Cardi B wore a jaw-dropping Dolce & Gabbana bloody red tulle gown, dramatic, extravagant, and unmistakably hers.
Nicki Minaj stunned in a shimmering Alexandre Vauthier tiger-striped long dress. Their looks alone could have defined the night. Instead, something else did.
Tensions had simmered for months: industry competition, whispered insults, and fan-fueled narratives kept alive by social media. But fashion events, especially during the hyper-dramatic 2010s, were no longer just about clothes, they were living stages for celebrity maneuvering, branding, and power.
That night, the pressure detonated.
When Cardi confronted Nicki over alleged comments about her child, a line she considers sacred, the exchange escalated in seconds. Security intervened. Voices rose. And then came the moment burned into pop culture memory: party-goers were waiting for a performance by Christina Aguilera when Cardi posed for a photo with La La Anthony and Kelly Rowland. Nicki walked by and intentionally stepped on Cardi's gown, causing it to rip. Chaos ensued, with Cardi taking off her shoe and throwing it at Nicki (she missed, though) and Nicki reportedly pulling off Cardi's wig.
What followed was even more brutal, not from the rappers, but from the fashion world.
Days later, supermodel Naomi Campbell delivered one of the coldest, most legendary pieces of shade:
“It was called the Icons Party… but I didn’t see any icons there.”
That sentence reframed the entire incident. It exposed fashion’s quiet hierarchies and unforgiving codes, reminding outsiders that glamour is policed as much by silence as by spectacle. Naomi’s shade underscored how quickly the industry redraws its boundaries.
The Harper’s Bazaar Icons Party 2018 incident revealed a deeper truth. Fashion is no longer sealed off from celebrity drama or hip-hop rivalry. Couture, conflict, and cultural power now collide in real time.
And while the feud eventually cooled, the Cardi B Nicki Minaj Harper’s Bazaar clash remains a defining pop-culture moment—a raw reminder that beneath diamonds and designer gowns, fashion still thrives on shockwaves, status, and spectacle.
