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Rachel Roy flees CFDA awards before Beyoncé’s arrival

Designer Rachel Roy grabbed her place card and left the starry CFDA Fashion Awards dinner before Beyoncé ever entered the room as the surprise recipient of the night’s Fashion Icon Award, sources said.

Roy sparked a social-media firestorm last month with rumors she was “Becky with the good hair,” a character name-checked in a confessional Beyoncé song about an alleged Jay Z affair.

At Monday’s CFDA gala, Roy arrived with model Candice Huffine, whom she dressed, and they posed together for pics on the red carpet.

But as the gala began, rumors spread that Beyoncé might attend. One fashion writer tweeted, “Jay Z has just arrived . . . What could it mean?” Then Beyoncé’s daughter, Blue Ivy, and mom, Tina Knowles, showed up, essentially giving away the night’s Icon winner. Sister Solange was also rumored to be on the way, but didn’t materialize.

But Roy dashed before Beyoncé arrived onstage. “She disappeared with her place card and never came back,” said a source. It was “weird. I don’t know if it was because she’s ‘Becky,’ or what?” Another stunned source at the event said, “Rachel just came and left.”

But a friend of Roy’s explained she exited the awards only because she had to catch an early flight the next day to be with her kids in LA.

Roy has previously denied being the Becky mentioned in Beyoncé’s “Lemonade.” She said in a statement: “There is no validity to the idea that the song references me personally. There is no truth to the rumors.”

Beyoncé received a standing ovation and told the assembled fashion elite that when she started out in Destiny’s Child, “a lot of labels didn’t really want to dress four black, country, curvy girls.

Jennifer Hudson also performed for a crowd including Anna Wintour, Carolina Herrera, Michael Kors, Karlie Kloss and François-Henri Pinault. The Weinstein Company heavily upped the production quality of the show, which was moved from Lincoln Center to the Hammerstein Ballroom with an eye toward launching a TV broadcast next year.