The $1 Billion Sleight of Hand Behind Hailey Bieber's Effortless Look
Chasing the Strawberry Glaze Skin Smoothie and the Rhode phone case reveals how a celebrity built a fortune by selling the illusion of being just like you.
Image: slate.com
Standing on a Curb for a $43 Smoothie
The unmarked building in Manhattan's West Village gives nothing away. A security guard catches me feeling along the mirrored wall for a handle, sweating through my shirt in the July heat dome. I've come for the Strawberry Glaze Skin Smoothie, which normally requires a trip to Erewhon in Los Angeles. Here, at Kith Ivy, a members-only sports club, it's the only East Coast outlet, but the club won't let me order at the bar or wait inside. I'm an interloper, so I stand on the curb while a delivery driver brings me the drink. The smoothie—almond milk, strawberries, vanilla collagen, sea moss—costs $43 with delivery fees and a tip. It arrives as a baby-pink dollop streaked with pulp, and I sip it hoping for a transfiguration. The texture repels me, and the taste veers toward banana soup. But the mission is to understand how this drink, and the woman behind it, has become a cultural gravitational pull for white girls in big cities. The answer, I'm learning, has less to do with the ingredients and more to do with the story she's told about them.
- Hailey Bieber
- Celebrity Branding
- Erewhon
- Kith Ivy
- Smoothie Culture
Rhode's Billion-Dollar Grab Bag
In 2022, Hailey Bieber launched Rhode, a skincare and makeup line that later sold to e.l.f. Beauty for $1 billion. The name is her middle name, a wry claim to a self-made identity when her last name alone—courtesy of marrying Justin Bieber in 2018—would have carried her. The products are deliberately unassuming: peptide lip liners, pinky-coral blushes, a Glazing Mist that, after multiple uses, still hasn't revealed its purpose. The real innovation is the phone case: a bulbous iPhone case in gray, brown, and taupe with a slit for a lip tint. It's ergonomic nightmare—it cramps your hand and looks like a misshapen potato, or, more uncharitably, a labia minora. But it's also a marketing feat. The case forces you to carry your lip product at all times, doubling your usage. My Rhode order—four products, including the Peptide Lip Tint in Toast—set me back $116. The case itself is instantly recognizable, a status symbol that signals you're in on the joke before you even open the tube.
- Rhode
- e.l.f. Beauty
- Lip Tint
- Phone Case
- Beauty Business
The Aesthetic Machine: Nails and Blushes That Define a Summer
Bieber's face is her product, but the people behind it are Zola Ganzorigt, her nail technician, and Mary Phillips, her makeup artist. Their work has spawned a catalog of viral trends: glazed doughnut nails, strawberry French tips, vanilla glaze, blueberry milk, and this summer's cobalt, a shade she wore that's now everywhere. The manicures cost nothing to copy if you already own the polish, as I did. The makeup look is equally low-key: flushed cheeks, minimal eye makeup, no contouring. The Rhode blush in Freckle, which I swipe on after my morning Pilates class, doesn't transform me. The look is about seeming effortless, as if you just ran a few blocks to catch a taxi. Bieber doesn't invent these trends; she curates them, and her name becomes the brand. The alchemy is that she appears to be the muse rather than the marketer, even as she owns the pipeline from her nail tech's studio to the Ulta shelf.
- Nail Trends
- Zola Ganzorigt
- Mary Phillips
- Hailey Bieber Aesthetic
- Cobalt Nails
Gap Jeans for a Body That Doesn't Exist
Bieber's partnership with Gap produced a line of wide-legged, lowish-rise jeans in a handful of washes, priced at $90 before shipping ($97 after). The jeans are a paean to '90s Gap, that era of effortless cool. The Cut's Carol Lee reviewed them and wrote that they 'make me feel like a full-time ceramicist in the Lower East Side who wears the same thing every day and looks chic doing it.' But the fit only accommodates up to a size 35, and on a frame with any curve, they flatten the backside. Lee, with her slight build, can pull it off; I cannot. My butt is at least 40 percent of my physical and moral value, and these jeans are a crime against it. The marketing, though, works: the jeans are bought by thousands who want to feel like they could be a ceramicist, even if they've never touched clay. It's the same promise as the smoothie and the phone case—buy this, and you'll look like you woke up like that, thin and white and never a diva.
- Gap Jeans
- Carol Lee
- Size Inclusivity
- Celebrity Fashion
- Effortless Style
The Price of Being an Everygirl
My Rhode order came to a little over $116, my Gap jeans around $97, and my smoothie $43 with delivery. My manicure was free because I already owned cobalt polish. That's what it costs to feel like the kind of girl who only needs a dab of blush and a spritz of mist to face the day. In reality, I need a long-wear concealer and a running start at whoever slighted me. The genius of Bieber's empire is that she's built it on averageness dressed as aspiration. The products are expensive enough to feel like a splurge, but not so expensive that they're inaccessible. The story is fill-in-the-blanks: she married the pop star you obsessed over as a kid, sure, but she's also just a girl who wants to fit in. Her marriage, to a man who can't be bothered to iron a shirt, only adds to her relatability. The smoothie tasted like nothing, but it kept me standing on that curb. That's the real product: the willingness to wait, pay, and pretend it works.
- Consumer Psychology
- Celebrity Endorsement
- Relatability
- Aspirational Marketing
- Cost of Beauty
Draws on source material published at slate.com.
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