Hailey Bieber covers the May issue of Allure to promote her skincare line, Rhode. That’s her middle name, she was Hailey Rhode Baldwin and now I guess we’re just always referring to her by her married name. Anyway, the celebrity skincare and celebrity makeup industries are oversaturated as hell and it feels like several of these brands will probably collapse pretty soon. Make way for Rhode, I guess. Hailey spent a few years developing the line and her thing is that everything has to be “affordable,” so nothing is over $30. Some highlights from this Allure piece:
Her feelings on LA: “L.A. is a really cool space of creative people, but…there’s a lot of shady people here too.”
She no longer does runway modeling work: “I had a really bad experience with a casting director who was very important. He said something to my agent that just shook my confidence when it came to the runway. I don’t want to feel bad about myself in this space because I feel really good about the other work that I do. So why would I even put myself in a position to feel small?”
Going brunette during the pandemic: “I don’t color my hair anymore. I don’t bleach it or anything, but I might do a gloss or a toner.”
Her YouTube channel: “I understand that there’s a lot about my life that people can’t relate to and I try not to be naive about that.”
She’s not even trying to control the narrative anymore: “It would be exhausting for me to try to control everything. There’s just no way I can do that. It’s very hard to control a media narrative, so I try to just do my best to be myself and accept that.”
Using her fame to get financing on Rhode: “I talked to different investment firms. I talked to different brand-incubation teams, and at the end of it, I realized that I’ve lent my name and my face to a lot of different people and a lot of different brands.” So she decided to go the start-up route, compiling her own team based on the insight she had gained. Rhode is funded by a small pool of investors, including One Luxury Group.
On the oversaturated beauty market: “I think that as a team, we are going into it knowing that people are tired of seeing brand after brand after brand from different people and faces and celebrities. I definitely have had my fears, for sure, because the market is so busy and so saturated. And I’ve had to, obviously, have the confidence in myself and in our brand to really feel it’s going to be something refreshing and different.”
Affordable: “I was ordering crazy amounts of skin care, trying everything that was expensive to inexpensive to mid-range. And I found that the most tried-and-true stuff were the solidly formulated products that were affordable, where I could tell people kept on going back to, and that’s what I kept going back to as well.”
She’s happy with Rhode: “I’m really happy with everything. I feel proud of the products that are going to come out. I feel excited for what is going to come even after that and what I can continue to develop. I’m hoping that people get their hands on it and they absolutely love it. But if they have feedback, I want to accept that as well.”
I honestly don’t have a problem with anything she says here, but I still wish she wouldn’t put all of her time and energy into this. You know what I mean? Like, she has as much right to do a skincare line as anybody else and she seems to have taken the process seriously. She did her research, weighed her options, met with different people, got a lot of feedback, organized investors and put a lot of work into it. Maybe it will be a success, maybe it won’t, but again… the market is so oversaturated and this still reeks of yet another unnecessary celebrity side-hustle that no one cares about.
Cover & IG courtesy of Allure.
Good lord, another batch of garbage skin care products no one needs. She admits in the article that she’s found “solidly formulated products” she “goes back to” but fails to articulate what she thinks is missing in the market.
Also, I’m tired of seeing actresses & models create beauty-related products. It’s like their entire lives are wrapped up in being beautiful. It’s exhausting. And for once I’d like to hear about a celebrity say they want to start a line of snow shovels or pizza cutting wheels, because they noticed what’s on the market isn’t very good.
“It’s like their entire lives are wrapped up in being beautiful. ” – but that’s what their lives are about. Being “pretty”, clothes, shopping, make-up and shoes. Vapid and futile lives…
The thing is you have to feel a little bad for her because she clearly wants to make her mark in Hollywood but she just has no personality or charisma. Having friends like Kendall and Kylie is probably frustrating because they don’t have personality or charisma either but they’re successful. She’s always just going to be known as Bieber’s wife. It would be cool to see her do something else outside of the spotlight but I’m sure she would never.
She has a mega star family, mega star husband and mega star Bffs. But still nothing there,not a spark .
How the hell is she a model? I get it’s a nepotism thing, but damn.
I think she’s insanely beautiful.
I think she’s one of those women who can look plain, and then with different makeup can look stunning. Uma Thurman is like that.
She’s pretty but she looks like any other pretty girl in America. What sets her apart is her family connections and who she married. She’s never been someone who stood out with loads of charisma.
I’m always switching up skincare and looking for new things, so I don’t mind lots of options being available. But here is the thing about Mrs Bieber – how can I take someone in their 20’s seriously about skincare? We don’t know that the stuff she’s doing will actually benefit her skin (and counter all of that sun exposure) in the long-term. If Martha Stewart came out with a line and said “here’s all the crap I used in my 30’s and 40’s”, and look at me now, I’d let her take all my money.
Her makeup looks for Coachella and this pink fashion shoot are pretty fire. I would be interested to see what the makeup looks like. If it’s just down to artist skill of the colours are that pigmented.
I chuckle at her comment about not engaging with the media narrative. I’ve heard stories of random anonymous fans making comments about her marriage and she angrily replies to them. I hope this interview is reflective of growth and turning over a new leaf for her, but she seems very much attempting to control the “narrative.”
I’d like to know how she can say she doesn’t color her hair any more but show up on a magazine with pink hair. So in her off hours she doesn’t color her hair herself, but for work purposes, it’ll still happen? OK, I guess. I think I’d rather have a professional do my color than try it at home, though.
Yeah, this will likely fail as a skin care line. Seeing 20 something’s create and promote skin care lines is amusing.
She’s just a nothingburger to me: no real talent, basic looks, too short to be a real model, her whole schtick is nepotism and who she married. I really wish she had some actual talent or something unique to contribute, but alas, Yawn. I want to like her but she’s so…oatmeal, nothing special. Next!