The Hottest Girl in the Country Is Making Millions Off Us. To Find Out Why, I Did the Unthinkable.

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I don’t want to stand outside on a too-clean curb at the bottom of New York’s West Village in an oppressive heat dome but I have no choice. I live several subway stops away, in a borough with a joyful absence of Erewhons, the L.A.-based luxury grocery store best known for pissing me off on a business trip when I just need a lighter and a Diet Coke. Erewhon sells a lot of specialty smoothies, ones designed for both health and beauty, namely this “Strawberry Glaze Skin Smoothie.” The drink originally launched alongside Hailey Bieber’s skincare brand, Rhode, but is still on the menu at Erewhon. And I have to have it.

To get a Strawberry Glaze Skin Smoothie outside of L.A., you have to be within a reasonable distance of Kith Ivy, a members-only sports club in Manhattan. (It’s inside an unmarked building, and through a mirrored door that I only found because security caught me feeling around a wall, sweating, looking for a handle.) Kith Ivy won’t let me wait in their lobby while the drink arrives, nor can I enter the smoothie bar to order for pickup; I’m not a member, just an interloper. Instead, I’m directed to stand outside like an honest-to-god moron, waiting for a delivery guy to bring me a smoothie full of almond milk, strawberries, vanilla collagen, and sea moss.

I find the texture of smoothies repellent, and I’m also personally offended at the prospect of spending just over $20 on a smoothie. But to fully understand Bieber’s appeal to elder Gen Alphas and younger Gen Xers alike, my mission for the week, accessing this inaccessible drink seems paramount. It’s just one of several products Bieber has put her name on, including a recent line of wide-legged Gap jeans, her (middle) namesake beauty line Rhode, and her brand ambassadorship of companies like Mango and Skims . In the last year of her 20s, Bieber has proved to be one of the most dominant cultural forces when it comes to what white girls in big cities want to put on their faces, on their bodies, and in their tummies.

The pro–Selena Gomez Redditors still might be out for her blood, but you have to give Bieber this much: She’s adeptly built a business well beyond her married last name, or her given one. Born to Stephen Baldwin, she married Justin Bieber in 2018, quickly becoming the adversary of teenage girls (and some delusional adult women) everywhere just as she changed her famous last name to another very famous one. While she’s worked with luxury fashion houses as a model and an influencer, we still know her best through her proprietary businesses. It’s a wild branding feat for someone with two very famous last names. All that notoriety, but what’s made her rich and famous as a real tastemaker is Rhode, a beauty company she named after herself and herself alone.