Author: Karina

The first time I crossed paths with Bella Hadid was on a tarmac outside of New York City. We were boarding Mark Cuban’s Boeing 757, the same one used by the Dallas Mavericks at the time, featuring extra room for the extra-long legs of NBA stars… or models. This flight was heading to the Victoria’s Secret fashion show in Paris. It was 2016, a pre-#MeToo era when young women strutting on national television in bejeweled underwear was a mostly accepted annual cultural moment.

I was there to report every detail of the models’ spray tans and body oils. Hadid was there to walk the glitter-strewn runway. Backstage, Hadid, then 20 years old, smiled a lot and spoke little. Where the veteran “angels” blew professional-grade kisses as they walked the runway, Hadid slowly, almost somberly, made her way toward the flashbulbs in a metallic gray corset, with dark waves falling past her shoulders.

Some eight years later, we’re face-to-face again, or rather side-by-side in a Zoom room. Hadid is at home, in the kitchen of her new Fort Worth, Texas home, with buttercream walls, vaulted ceilings, Tuscan columns, and at least one antler-shaped chandelier. She has slicked her hair back into the low, tight bun that launched a thousand “clean girl aesthetic” disciples in recent years. Her nails are short and bare, with neat oval tips. She has on a simple, teddy-bear-colored mohair sweater with buttons dotting the ridge of one shoulder, offset by jewelry that feels a bit more maximalist. Her yellow gold knot earrings harken to the 1980s (a time when Hadid, who refers to her current age as “30 in three years,” was not yet born).

I don’t catch Hadid’s eyes flitting away from our video call even once before she gracefully excuses herself to let out her dog, Beans, who has been treated to a bone for good behavior during our meeting. Where others might clomp back, plop down, and apologize breathily, Hadid smoothly glides back into view with a smile, perched in front of her laptop like she never left. Maybe it’s the cozy, coffee-colored sweater playing mind games with me, but it’s hard not to notice how self-possessed she is, how serene. It’s a far cry from the seemingly timid, withdrawn Hadid I remember from the spectacle at the Grand Palais.

Since then, Hadid has risen from “the younger Hadid sister” to a capital-S Supermodel in her own right. She’s been the face of multiple glossy campaigns for multiple fashion houses (Dior, Versace, Lanvin, Moschino, and Burberry, to name a few). She’s covered just about every major magazine, including this one.

Hadid’s also come to speak openly about her mental health struggles (severe anxiety, brain fog), and her battle with Lyme disease, a tick-borne illness associated with symptoms like extreme tiredness, muscle aches and pains, and other problematic immune responses. (The last few weeks have been tough, she says, and describes her recovery as “not really linear” and “a roller coaster.”) In the past year, she not only took an unofficial step back from modeling to focus on her mental and physical health, but moved to Texas and started an entirely new chapter with her horseman boyfriend, Adan Banuelos, whom she refers to as “my partner” and “an incredible older businessman” (he is 35). Banuelos trains cutting horses and riders. (Cutting is a type of equestrian competition in which a horse and rider have to separate a single cow from a herd.) Earlier this year, Hadid, a longtime show jumper, competed in an amateur cutting horse competition (she placed eighth). She was ready for new challenges. “After 10 years of modeling,” Hadid says, “I realized I was putting so much energy and love and effort into something that, in the long run, wasn’t necessarily giving it back to me.”

Now, she’s back in the public eye, and she means business. Hadid is launching her own fragrance line, ‘Ôrəbella, pronounced “aura-bella,” a portmanteau of Hadid, which means “iron ore” in Arabic, and her first name. And, in a way, it’s a family business. “Growing up in an Arab family, perfume and scents were almost a personality trait—I can still remember the way my grandparents smelled when they walked into a room,” Hadid says. “My uncle Mahmoud was making his own essential oils in the 70s—woody, tobacco-smelling scents.”

Preempting my next question, Hadid asserts that the line is not the product of some celebrity brand incubator. “It wasn’t something where somebody came to me and said, ‘We want to start a business with you,” Hadid says. She simply sought an alternative to the kind of alcohol-based fragrances that tend to come out of major perfume houses.

“I get hives and rashes from stress alone, so I tend to stay away from anything that will trigger my body nowadays,” she says. And that includes traditional perfumes. Five years ago, Hadid began concocting her own scents. She would visit a health food store near her family’s Pennsylvania farm, picking out the most obscure essential oils she could find, and blend them in glycerin-filled spray bottles. (As a certified aromatherapist, I can confirm the only safe essential oil to wear directly on the skin is lavender; any others must be mixed with a base such as glycerin for safe experimentation.) “I was trying to make them as unique as possible so that when I put them on my body, it felt singular to me,” Hadid says.

As ‘Ôrəbella came to life, she took every step of the process into her own hands—just as she hand-mixed the earliest versions of her fragrances, she created her own brand decks and pitched the company to investors herself. “I didn’t want to just put something on the market that was another product or another perfume,” she says. “It was something I was already extremely passionate about, and I didn’t want to keep it for myself anymore.”

Like Hadid’s first prototypes, each final ‘Ôrəbella bottle houses a biphasic formula with a golden layer of plant oils (camellia, jojoba, shea, olive, sweet almond) and essential oils floating atop a glycerin base. Unlike the spray-bottle originals, each fragrance is poured into a bottle of colored glass, cut to look like a jewel, with the words “shake well” scribbled in English and French beneath the cap. The 100-milliliter versions come with the option of a separately purchased gold perfume stand, meant to look like an objet d’art, in homage to her mother Yolanda’s vintage perfume collection. And, unlike most perfumes, this one isn’t meant to be sprayed with abandon on your clothes, your hair, or your love letters. Its oil-rich base means it is strictly for use on skin; it would probably leave unseemly stains on clothing (I never risked it). It’s either restrictive or a novel, intimate take on scent, depending on how you look at it.

It has nothing to do with fragrance, but I’m running out of time to ask one of my most burning questions: How, exactly, has Hadid been getting her hair to fall in the effortless ripples I’ve seen in her recent Instagram posts? Hadid grins broadly. “Do you want me to go look for you?” she offers, before scooping up her laptop and whisking me down a long, dark hallway to her bathroom. Cradling her laptop (me, as it were) in one arm, she pulls each bottle off a shelf and holds them up to the screen, so I can quickly scribble down notes. Her recipe for perfect cowgirl waves, is, exactly, this: Step 1: Shampoo and condition (she’s been using Anablue Scalp Cleanser and Treatment Oil). Step 2: Scrunch a pump or two of SheaMoisture’s Coconut & Hibiscus Frizz-Free Curl Mousse through damp hair. Step 3: Finish with a halo of IGK’s Beach Club Texture Spray or Living Proof Full Dry Volume & Texture Spray (she uses both but ran out of the latter). Step 4: Head to your local rodeo.

“Just as I have styled myself for years now–which I still do–I love being able to do my own hair and makeup, be happy with how I look, and get ready with my girlfriends here in Texas,” Hadid says. “We have the best time, and I never feel like I need to do too much.” Doing exactly what she feels like suits Hadid well. “For the first time now, I’m not putting on a fake face. If I don’t feel good, I won’t go. If I don’t feel good, I take time for myself. And I’ve never had the opportunity to do that or say that before,” Hadid says. “Now when anybody sees me in pictures and they say, I look happy, I genuinely am. I am feeling better; my bad days now were my old good days.”

Source: allure.com