Hailey Bieber has been teasing her skin-care brand, Rhode Skin, for what feels like an eternity—a trademark filed here, a lab sample slipped into a TikTok there, strategically placed glazed donut emojis all over Instagram. After months of waiting, the line is finally available to shop.
Rhode features a thoughtful curation of three products: the Barrier Repair Cream, a rich moisturizer; Peptide Glazing Fluid, a “dewy glow in a bottle”; and the Peptide Lip Balm. Much like Hailey’s style, the packaging is minimal, with a slight callback to the early ’00s. What else? Each product clocks in at under $30.
Fans may be surprised that the line is a small collection, but Bieber explains that she wanted it to be very curated and edited. “I wanted it to be just go-to essentials,” she tells Glamour. “I also have this ethos of making ‘one of everything really good,’ and where I get that thought from is the way that I curate and edit my wardrobe as well—that one perfect pair of jeans you keep reaching for, that one perfect T-shirt you keep going back to because of the fit. That’s how I feel about skin care as well. That one perfect moisturizer you keep going back to and reaching for because it’s tried and true, and a great formula, and it’s doing exactly what you need it to do.”
Bieber chose to focus on hydration for the first launch because of its universal appeal. “I’m somebody who’s on the move all the time, so if I had to pin it down, what would be the three things I absolutely need on a flight?” she says. “Can’t live without it, has to be in my bag—that’s how I think about the edit of the skin care.”
Bieber credits the experts she’s constantly surrounded by, as well as her mom and grandmother—both of whom she shares the middle name Rhode with—as major influences on the line. When she was growing up, her family always taught her the importance of self-care and even imbued Bieber with her love of hydration. “Getting out of the shower or the bath as a kid, my mom would slather my body head to toe with so much hydration. And I feel like that sticks with you as you get older.”
Her obsession with skin care only grew as she got older, and after being asked about what she uses on her skin all the time, she decided a skin-care brand would be the best next step. “I feel like I’ve really developed my beauty philosophy over the last eight years,” she says. “And during the pandemic, I really had the opportunity to dive into learning about my favorite ingredients and really honing in on and figuring out what I love in the skin-care space.”
While it’s tempting to write off Rhode as just another celebrity brand, Bieber has put in the work. Over the pandemic she immersed herself in the skin-care world, both behind the scenes and across her social media presence, chatting with experts like Dr. Barbara Sturm on Instagram Live. She had conversations with top experts in the field, and eventually built an advisory board, including dermatologist Dhaval Bhanusali, MD, and cosmetic chemist Ron Robinson. She is also the majority owner of the brand and isn’t backed by a cosmetics incubator the way many celeb brands are.
Bieber had a clear vision, from the formulas themselves to the look of the brand. “The two biggest things are my obsession with the formulas and the ingredients, and the aesthetic of the brand,” she says. “I’m coming from the modeling world and the fashion space, so I really wanted to bring that easy, cool, sporty, chic, editorial vibe to a skin-care beauty brand.”
Part of that vibe is the brand’s unofficial mascot: the glazed donut. Bieber declared 2022 the year of glazed donut skin with an extremely dewy selfie, and since then, the donut emoji has popped up on several of her posts, including the brand’s announcement. “With skin care, you equate it to something that feels yummy. For me, it’s always been a freshly dipped glazed donut, like fresh Krispy Kreme out of the box. There’s that glaze coating. I want my whole body to feel like a glazed donut, yummy from head to toe.”
