When Hailey Bieber begins a statement with “the Internet is a scary place for a pregnant woman,” you can’t be entirely sure what will follow. Will she detail the cognitive dissonance created when doomscrolling collides with life-bearing? Or divulge the fears she has about bringing a child into the harsh glare of fame’s spotlight, as the 27-year-old model and entrepreneur did only a year ago, when she jokingly said that that prospect made her cry “all the time”?
Turns out it’s neither a global nor a hyperpersonal worry that gives Bieber pause when she’s tempted to go online. It’s a problem for the digital age that happens to be deeply relatable: cyberchondria, also known as the anxiety or “negative outcome of online health information seeking,” per one scientific journal.
“You see so many stories—traumatic birth stories, traumatic experiences—and I know that that’s very real,” she says, resting her pink-manicured hands gently on her belly. “But I don’t want to scare myself.”
When we meet, it’s been a month since Hailey and Justin Bieber’s pregnancy announcement, and she looks the opposite of apprehensive. Curled up on one end of a leather sofa at the studio in Hollywood where she films her YouTube series (“Who’s in My Bathroom?” and “What’s in My Kitchen?”), Bieber is dressed in a cropped white tee and black low-slung Helsa jeans that cradle her exposed baby bump as if they were expressly designed for maternity wear. (The cult Los Angeles label is not actually intended for expectant moms, but Bieber has a gift for making any trend feel like her own invention.) Her face is almost bare of makeup, revealing a dusting of freckles across the bridge of her nose and cheeks, which are kissed pink from the blush from her skincare brand, Rhode.
After a first trimester marked by acute morning sickness—“I don’t know why they call it that because it lasts all day long; we need to change the name,” she says, with a vexed smile—Bieber has arrived at the homestretch feeling good, thanks to strength-training workouts and a high-protein diet consisting of “lots of eggs, chicken, and steak.” Her publicist has brought in several grocery bags of prepared foods from Erewhon and a selection of water and kombucha. But Bieber’s primary food directive during pregnancy? “I just listen to whatever the baby wants. If the baby wants pizza one day, we’re doing pizza.”
A self-proclaimed foodie, she’s allowed herself one extravagance during pregnancy: hiring a private chef to prepare dinners at home, something that she readily, almost sheepishly, acknowledges is a “huge luxury.” Bieber adopts a similar demeanor when I ask about the new Lorraine Schwartz–designed diamond ring she’s wearing on her wedding ring finger, and she’s quick to dispel tabloid rumors that the new ring is upwards of ten carats larger than her old engagement ring.
“Actually, this is only one carat bigger. It’s just elongated,” she says, before she pulls her hands back and folds her fingers onto her lap to hide them. “They’re going off with their own stories about it. I don’t like it. I didn’t want to talk about it,” she says, staying polite but guarded.
Not wanting to talk about, explain, or apologize for every detail of her private life was one motivation for hiding her pregnancy for six months. The other was a product of happenstance. “I was honestly able to keep it quiet because I stayed small for a long time,” she says. “I didn’t have a belly, really, until I was six months pregnant, which was when I announced it. I was able to wear big jackets and stuff.”
Still, striving for privacy can take its toll. “I probably could have hid it until the end,” she says. “But I didn’t enjoy the stress of not being able to enjoy my pregnancy outwardly. I felt like I was hiding this big secret, and it didn’t feel good. I wanted the freedom to go out and live my life.”
The desire to live her life comes up multiple times throughout our interview, a telltale sign of how difficult it’s been to do just that since she became Mrs. Bieber six years ago. Though she’s worked with a therapist to, in her own words, “compartmentalize” the negative scrutiny she receives on a daily basis, there are certain aspects of her experience of mega-fame that are harder to box away.
“People have made me feel so bad about my relationship since day one. ‘Oh, they’re falling apart. They hate each other. They’re getting divorced.’ It’s like people don’t want to believe that we’re happy,” she says. “I used to try to act like it hurts less and less. I’ve tried to think that you get used to it at a certain point, that this is what’s going to be said and this is how people are going to be. But I realize that it doesn’t actually ever hurt any less.”
In person, Bieber is younger-looking and more delicately featured and petite than her red carpet appearances or her latest Saint Laurent campaign would have you believe. The Hailey that the public knows projects the confidence of an OG girlboss, a power-suited career woman who’s just stepped out of a Patrick Nagel poster. It has made her the ideal brand ambassador for Tiffany & Co., Jimmy Choo, Calvin Klein, and Versace, labels where female strength and luxury make excellent bedfellows. But that stereotype—tough, with a certain emotional detachment—tends to eclipse the person who lives beyond those glossy images. The real Hailey smiles easily, talks with her hands (frequently adorned with nail art of one kind or another), wrinkles her nose when she laughs, performs silly challenges like speed flower-arranging with guests on her YouTube shows, and is, at the end of the day, a 20-something in the throes of early adulthood, still trying to figure it all out.
Born in Tucson, Arizona, to the actor Stephen Baldwin and his wife, the graphic designer Kennya Deodato Baldwin, and raised in Nyack, New York, Bieber describes her early years as happy ones. “I had a fairly normal childhood. Obviously, I come from the family that I come from, and I always recognized that that was different,” the younger of two daughters acknowledges. “I’m not super close with my family at this point in my life because I feel like I’m very independent. I’m my own individual now, and I’ve built my own family. But when I look back on my childhood and how I grew up, I have very fond, beautiful memories.”
Bieber signed with Ford Models at 17 and moved to New York City, where, she says, somewhat obliquely, that she found herself suddenly surrounded by “a lot of grown people doing very grown things.”
“I started traveling the world, making my own money,” she recalls. “I got my own apartment and had to learn how to live on my own and pay bills. That pushed me into adulthood kind of quickly, when most of my friends were just leaving for college.”
Professional surfer and Hawaii native Kelia Moniz, a close friend from those formative days in New York, confirms that the bestie she’s had on speed dial for nearly the past decade has always had an adventurous streak. “We used to go to Montauk a lot because my husband’s family has a house out there,” says Moniz, referring to the photographer Joe Termini, who introduced her to Hailey and Justin. » “The first time I took Hailey wakesurfing, it was a really stupid idea, honestly. She’s always been a little afraid of the water. But I said, ‘Hailey, I promise you, we’ll do this together.’ We’re both on the same surfboard. She’s lying down in front of me, and I’m holding the rope. When Joe takes off on the boat, I stand up first, and then I pull her up from the back of her wet suit and”—Moniz interrupts her own story, laughing—“she had these tiny long legs and she’s trying to stand up on the surfboard, and she looked like a deer after they’re born, trying to find their feet. It was the worst idea, because it was the hardest way for her to learn how to surf. But we had so much fun.” Despite suboptimal conditions that day in Montauk, Bieber didn’t hesitate to get on a board again with Moniz. “We did it right the second time and surfed together in Waikiki. It’s the best place in the world to learn,” says Moniz, a two-time ASP Women’s World Longboard Champion whose family owns a Honolulu surf school and is regarded as surf royalty. “I think people wouldn’t expect her to go surfing, but she is always down.”
Stepping boldly into the unknown might be the hallmark of a modern woman, but it’s also the quality that led Bieber to make the decidedly old-fashioned decision to wed at age 21, which was the norm for women some 50 years ago. While she maintains that marrying young was the right move for her, Bieber points a pink talon toward an empty club chair opposite the sofa we’re seated on and says, “I wouldn’t tell a 21-year-old in the chair right there, ‘I think you should get married.’ It’s really each individual’s experience.” As she and Justin draw nearer to the reality of an expanded family, Bieber is taking full advantage of the time the two have remaining as a couple without children.
“In the beginning [of pregnancy], it was super emotional for me. Like, ‘I love this human so much. How can I possibly bring someone else into this?’ ” she says. “I’m trying to soak in these days of it being Justin and me, just the two of us.”
Another milestone Bieber has reached ahead of many of her peers is building her own company, the skincare line Rhode, which she launched in 2022. “I knew that I wasn’t going to stay in the modeling world forever, and I always wanted to parlay that into something else. For a while, I wasn’t sure what that was, until I started Rhode, and then I was like, ‘Oh, this is what I’m meant to be doing. This is where I feel confident and authentic.’ ”
Her self-awareness kicks in as soon as she finishes that thought, as though she’s anticipating an eye roll. “I knew it was a really oversaturated space and everyone was tired of celebrity brands,” she says. “So I wanted to come in with a different point of view. The most important thing is the efficacy of the product, what’s inside the bottle. But not only that, I wanted it to feel chic. I wanted it to feel cool.” Rhode’s philosophy is centered on bringing its founder’s trademark dewy glow and minimalist polish to the masses at an accessible price point launching with products under $30.
“I looked at it from my point of view of style. Like, what are the essential items you need to have in your closet? The perfect leather jacket, the perfect pair of jeans, the perfect white tee. So it came down to: What are your must-haves that make up your skincare wardrobe? You don’t need to have a nine-step routine to have great skin. It doesn’t have to be complicated.”
Though her harshest detractors have long dismissed Bieber’s career accomplishments as the product of nepotism—something she’s shown a sense of humor about by wearing a nepo baby T-shirt when snapped by the paparazzi—the success her company has achieved in two short years is undeniable. Rhode’s first launch consisted of three skincare products, and one, the Peptide Glazing Fluid, immediately sold out and generated a 100,000-person waiting list. A pineapple cleanser and two beauty products—a lip treatment that comes in clear and tinted versions, and the Pocket Blush—have followed and been embraced with equal fervor. Shortly after launching the brand, Bieber was hailed on the cover of Forbes’s 30 Under 30 issue as a “model to mogul”; the following year, she was honored as a member of the “next generation of leadership” in Time magazine.
This past February, Rhode announced a new CEO, Nick Vlahos, the executive who led Jessica Alba’s Honest Company to an IPO valuation of $1.44 billion, suggesting that Bieber has bigger moves in store for her little beauty brand. Don’t expect the Gen Z influencer to turn into a corporate stiff anytime soon, though. One of Rhode’s most hyped products is its silicone iPhone case, which is designed with a slot to hold its popular lip tint. It’s at once a playful and a practical product. When I ask how that came to be, she says, “We were in a meeting one day, and I had one of those sticky things on the back of my phone,” she says, picking up her iPhone, which is encased in Rhode’s “shortcake” colorway. “We were talking, and I was sticking the lip tint on the back of the phone. And collectively, everyone was like, ‘huh.’ Then I said, ‘Wait. Can we do this? Can we make something that can hold this in your phone? Can someone Google if this exists?’ ” she says, her voice growing louder with excitement. “And it didn’t.”
The legendary makeup artist Pat McGrath, who helms her own billion-dollar beauty brand and who’s known Bieber since she was a fledgling model, credits Rhode’s success to its founder’s intimate involvement in its development. “What is always going to set Rhode apart is that it is truly an extension of Hailey and her commitment to creating products that reflect her own beauty philosophy—simple, effective, and fun,” says McGrath. “She has a deep understanding of what today’s consumers want, and she’s delivering it with authenticity and passion.”
Even Wired magazine, whose reader demographic is squarely male and middle-aged, grudgingly gave the Lip Case its due, writing, “This simple, curvy lip-balm phone case highlighted the fact that there is an entire universe of gear that has yet to exist—especially for women.” Both Porsche and Heinz ketchup capitalized on the phone case’s viral appeal by releasing ads marketing similar designs to hold car keys and a ketchup packet. (Neither company has put those cases into production. Porsche’s ad was an April Fools’ Day joke, and Heinz’s was intended as a giveaway promotion.) One comment on Porsche’s Instagram reel succinctly summarized what was already abundantly clear: “From ketchup to luxury cars, what Hailey does everyone follows.”
Despite having more than 52 million followers on Instagram, Bieber is still surprised by the vastness of her reach. “The biggest compliment for me is if I’m out somewhere and someone waves their lip treatment at me. It is the most surreal feeling,” she says. “I can’t believe that this person went out and bought it.”
Bieber’s publicist pokes her head into the room to tell her that she’s in danger of missing her flight and helps pack up the Erewhon leftovers. I ask where she’s headed. Idaho, Bieber tells me, where she and Justin have a house. And will it be just the two of them for one last babymoon? She nods. “He’s already there,” she says, “waiting for me.”
Senior Style Editor: Allia Alliata di Montereale. Hair by Duffy at Streeters; makeup by Diane Kendal at Art Partner; manicure by Caroline Cotten for Essie at the Wall Group. Set design by Sean Thomson at the Magnet Agency.
Executive production by Erin Fee Productions; local service production by Westy; executive producers: Erin Fee, Ben Bonnet; producer: Zhelma San Millán; first photo assistant: Mark Lincoln; digital technician: Luca Trevisani; photo assistants: Mike Lopez, Jorge Solorzano, Emma Mortimer; postproduction by SKN Lab; fashion assistants: Tori López, Jacob Lincoln Davis, Sage McKee, Kaley Azambuja; production assistants: Mike Lai, Andrew Belvedere, Paris Potter; hair assistant: Dale Delaporte; makeup assistant: Mical Klip; art coordinator: John Armstrong; art assistants: Toni Andres, Max Gray Wilbur; tailor: Susie Kourinian at Susie’s Custom Designs, Inc.
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