Bella Hadid On Texas Summers, Staying Grounded, And Her New Fragrance Launch

Elle

4 days ago

Bella Hadid is so excited about her new perfume launch that she tells me she wants my number so she can hear what I think once I try it. That's the magic of Hadid. She genuinely wants to talk about how she sees the world, and how you see it, too. Right now, she's laser-focused on Eternal Roots, the fifth fragrance in her perfume line, 'Ôrəbella.
Eternal Roots is a woodsy and fruity scent—raspberry and lychee intertwine with vetiver, papyrus, and pink pepper to create something unexpected yet sweet. Hadid says she approaches making perfume the same way she gets dressed. 'It's like my fashion style,' she says. 'I like to put a bunch of weird stuff together and hope it works. I don't want to use something that everybody else has used. It makes me feel like I'm putting an outfit together with a bunch of accessories that don't work, like when I started wearing basketball shorts and ballet flats. I don't know why, but I liked it. That's what these fragrances are to me.'
I point out that everyone in New York City now pairs basketball shorts with ballet flats, and Hadid smiles. Clearly, she's hoping the same thing happens with her seemingly mismatched fragrance notes. Ahead, she talks about the inspiration behind the name Eternal Roots, when she feels most rooted in herself, and her summer in the Texas heat.
Good. I just got to L.A., and I am at my best friend's house; she's pregnant. I get to see her for a couple of days before I start working on our launch and getting everything done. So I wanted to spend time with her and my parents. But I've just been in Texas, enjoying the sun.
This summer was an Eternal Roots summer, which is lychee, pink pepper, vetiver, and raspberry blossom. It's very soft, but it's also a little gritty. We wanted to make something that was a little bit androgynous, but this one's sweeter, which I love. I've always loved sweet scents, and I know that doesn't hit everybody the same, but that's why I like to make these sweet scents with a little bit of something jazzy at the bottom.
Lychee was a very nostalgic taste for me. I never knew that you could put that in a fragrance, but I just asked. And raspberry is my favourite gelato flavour. Weirdly enough, they worked really well together. Then having these woody scents that complement that at the bottom is what makes me excited about scent.
There are different ways I can explain the meaning of the name. Everything in 'Ôrəbella comes from essential oils and Mother Nature. It's about grounding into the earth, or the roots of a tree. Grounding into the eternal roots of Mother Nature. Then that slowly went into grounding within yourself. But how do you ground? The way that I felt about that is grounding within my family and my lineage and the group of friends that I've built around me over the past 20 years. [Then there's the idea] of my feet in the soil, as the roots of myself. What are those roots, and where do they come from, and how has that made me grow into the person I am today?
All of ['Ôrəbella's] scents are very nostalgic. They pull from different parts of my childhood. We all have this collective consciousness of our life experiences. Whether they are very similar or not similar at all, [they are] similar in some context when it comes to the eternal existence of who we are as people.
Sometimes we forget about our childhood. We forget about that inner child, not knowing that so much of her is inspiration and beauty. [I think it's important to] take not only who we are now, but the strength of who we were as kids, and find that within ourselves consistently.
Strength comes from within, and then grounding comes from grounding in nature and grounding with the people that make you feel like you, and then finding your inner child and making sure that she feels seen.
I feel most grounded when I'm around people that I love and people that see me for who I am. I feel most grounded when I'm in nature, when my feet are in the grass. It sounds generic, but I believe that nature is the most healing thing that we have on this planet. Most of the things that ground me are God-given gifts. It's not something that you can buy.
Self-reflection is why this fragrance came up. In my experience in fashion and beauty, you start to do things for other people. You start to find your worth in jobs, or in designers or people that you work around. I realised that the reflection that I had of myself wasn't the same reflection that other people saw of me.
Being eternally rooted in yourself is so important for that self-reflection: To be your own mirror and understand yourself and not put your self-worth in other people's hands. It goes back to walking in your truth and finding the people around you that are like-minded, and being strong within yourself, while not being hard.
Life can make people hard and make a lot of really beautiful hearts cold. It doesn't mean that anybody's a bad person. It just means experiences they've gone through have made them that way.
I never wanted to allow anything external to make me cold. I always wanted to keep my grittiness—a coolness instead of a coldness—but stay sweet, kind, and positive. That goes into the ingredients of the fragrance. That sweet lychee and the sweet raspberry blossom and pink pepper, then having the papyrus and patchouli and vetiver smell at the bottom that comes in as a toughness. To have that duality is important. To not let yourself get to a place where you're not you anymore because of your experiences.
Self-reflection really goes back to staying true to who you are, no matter what life throws at you. I'm still learning. It's not like I can say that I walk that walk every day because it's hard. When I am most grounded and when I do feel most self-reflective is when I'm being true to myself and not people-pleasing and overextending myself. It's not something that is linear. It's something that we will constantly have to work on.
This is the first scent that I can't really pinpoint exactly where you would wear it to, because you can wear it really anywhere. It's not like Nightcap, where it has a sexier scent and you want to wear it out to dinner at night, and Blooming Fire is for a nice summer day or being on the beach—being, you know, like the Fourth of July. But this scent is so multifaceted, in my opinion, and I think it's kind of like Salted Muse, where you can wear it at any point of the day.
But I do believe, like, this is a scent that you can wear in the winter, in the snow; you can wear it in the summer, on the beach. You can wear it to a bar; you can wear it to a restaurant; you can wear it to get coffee in the morning. This is a forever scent. You don't even need a time or place or day. This is an everyday kind of girl.
It's genuinely about how I feel every day. I love Window 2 Soul, that's my go-to. Nightcap is my dinner [scent]. Blooming Fire I will wear for any given outdoor activity.
I just wake up and I pull one out. I'm very lucky that I have fragrances everywhere in my house, and I have all of them in my purse too. Sometimes I'll mix them depending on the day, especially if it gets too hot out. It gets to 105 in Texas, and sometimes you need a little sweetness when you're around horses all day. It's fun when people ask me about the scents whenever I go out or go to the ranch. I do like to switch it up so that I can answer questions about them, because it makes me happy.
In the hair, on the body. I go fresh out of the shower. Boobs, butt, legs. Everything. If I'm wearing a low-cut shirt or my shoulders are out, I will put it on as moisturiser, because it makes me yummy and moisturised and shiny. You could smell me from 12 miles away.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
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Katie Berohn is ELLE's beauty editor. Previously, she held the same title at Who What Wear, where she was promoted from associate beauty editor. She's written for publications like The Cut, Cosmopolitan, Good Housekeeping, and Mashable. Her interests include fragrance, vintage shopping, hot yoga, food, travel, music, books, and attempting to make every NYT Cooking recipe. She's on the endless hunt to find the perfect shade of red lipstick.