Bella Hadid’s Debut Fragrances Are Now Available to Shop at Ulta
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By now, you’ve probably heard that Bella Hadid is launching a fragrance brand called Orebella—which is available to shop today. You may also already seen the brand’s golden geometric bottles and a tutorial on activating the scents, and maybe even read a blind review or two. Celebrity fragrance and beauty brands are, of course, a dime a dozen—with new ones launching monthly—but I can attest that Orebella is genuinely innovative.
What Hadid has built is a brand that feels authentically hers, with easy, wearable scents and good-for-you formulas that are delightfully addictive. The three Orebella scents are alcohol-free and based around essential oils like rose, geranium, and almond sweet fixed oil. The fragrances are suspended in a hydrating and nourishing base that must be shaken up before spraying close to the skin. Blooming Fire, a warm floral, has been sitting on my work desk for two months, and I look forward to commuting to the office just to spritz it on. I can’t recall the last time a fragrance—celebrity or otherwise—made me feel that way.
I caught up with Hadid in April, before the brand’s launch, to talk to her about the story behind each scent, how fragrance plays into her wellness journey, and why fly spray smells like happiness. Here’s what she said.
On developing Orebella
I started about five years ago, and fragrance and oils were just something I was doing for myself and for my mom, but mostly just, like, having downtime after work. I was already kind of concocting different essential oil blends in my house using the lavender from the farm. I would go to our little health food store and buy the weirdest, most unique essential oils that I possibly could find. And just through that, my nose started to get excited and intrigued about the future of what fragrance could be.
I never had a fragrance I was so obsessed with that made me feel unique and different. I started making my own and started making decks about it. Then, all of a sudden, I had conversations with myself about my future and, like, what excited me, and it really was bringing something that was so personal to me to the world, and having the opportunity for people to see my heart and my brain. Creating Orebella was the best form of therapy, especially just using my brain again and educating myself on different things and knowing the business behind all of this, but also being able to stay true to who I am.
To have a new product that opens a new market within fragrance was so cool to me, being able to do our bi-phase formula, which started from an idea. I used to concoct my oils with glycerin, which would make my skin so soft, and it would last all day. So, when I finally pitched that to [my team] a couple of years ago, they thought I was insane. And now we’re here with our moisturizing five-oil blend and shake-to-activate thing. We just became obsessed with pushing the edge and [moving] the needle within our industry, which excites me so much. That’s why I know that there is a future in this: If I just keep being innovative and pushing the boundaries of what we can do, and freaking my entire team out every week, then we’re going to be on a good path to make something really cool.
On how the name came to be
People say all the time that dreams come true and to keep dreaming. Living in New York City with the jobs we do in our industry, like: Dreams will come later—I need to pay my very expensive rent bill right now. The most beautiful thing about Orebella is, it really was a dream that actually came true. The name came to me in the middle of the night. The universe dropped it in my brain. If the universe brings you something, and it goes into your mind, and you don’t do something with it, like, it’ll get transferred to somebody else’s brain. I come up with many ideas that I don’t actually end up following through on. And so I was like: This one I’m doing. My team and I ended up brainstorming “Orebella” spelled this way, which is the phonetic spelling of aura. And I think it works really well. It makes it something cool to look at.
On scent as an aspect of wellness
There’s the scientific and the spiritual. Going through my journey of finding myself through understanding myself better, through pain and a little bit of suffering, and, like, a little bit of just knowing myself, and getting through it internally—just being able to have a scent routine every day is so important. But also knowing that we are all so unique and multifaceted, whether in what we like, how we feel, or how we walk down the street. Orebella is something that I want people to put on in the morning, after showering, douse their entire body with it, feel moisturized, feel happy, and even mix the scents together to make something that’s a little different than, you know, your best friend or your sister or your brother. You can walk out into the street knowing that you have something on you as a second skin that makes you feel a little different than everyone else.
And then, from the scientific part, going back to health: I didn’t feel comfortable putting alcohol on my skin anymore. And whether it’s like high-aluminum deodorants, or chemicals in the products that we use every day—if I were to put a product out and have people, you know, spend their money on something that I’m promoting, I want to make sure that it’s good for them, and that it makes them feel good and has a lot of different uses. I want to make something that you could go into your bathroom and look at every day, knowing that you spent your money on something that makes you feel excited and good. Having no alcohol, being vegan and cruelty-free, and honestly, just good for you is something that excites me about moving into the wellness and fragrance world.
How she would describe each scent
I want people to really know that for me, there is something really nostalgic about the first three scents that we’re launching now, or the ones that I’ve already made that we’ll be launching later this year, if all goes well. I want people’s emotions to be triggered when they smell them. I want people to feel nostalgic of something from their childhood or, you know, have a sense of peace knowing all of our experiences are not singular. The thing that I always would write down is “Our auras are our best accessories,” and I think for this to be a second skin, and for people to be able to smell it on themselves, and having it change with the pH of your skin because they’re essential oils was super important. I think [the fragrances are] conversation starters; people have to ask about what you’re wearing. And you can even mix them.
Window2Soul: Rose, jasmine, it has a little bit of lemon and tonka bean in it, and it feels like you just dove into the middle of a rose petal. You know what I mean? Or like you’re walking through a garden—at the botanical gardens on a field trip in sixth grade—and you have all of these smells just in your nose. You don’t know what it is, but it smells beautiful and fresh. It’s extremely fresh, and it makes you feel beautiful and confident and happy.
Salted Muse: This one has pink peppercorn in it and sea salt. It makes me feel like I’m like just diving into the ocean and getting water up my nose. You also smell the olive trees and the flowers around you; you’re on the beach, and it’s just hot, sandy, salty. Inside we have amber and and a little bit of lavender—I wanted to get the highs and lows of lavender being kind of feminine, but the woodiness of like olive and amber and sea salt and pepper. The pepper really does make it have this very intriguing, masculine kind of smell to it, which I really think is beautiful.
Blooming Fire: The monoi flower was something that I really wanted to make a scent with—I love that smell. Whether it’s from sunscreen or from a body oil you can buy in a grocery store while traveling, that scent is super nostalgic, and it kind of makes you feel like you’re sitting on the beach and watching the sunset. The highs and lows of being able to put something as sweet as a monoi flower with patchouli, to make it kind of have, like, that balanced scent. Some days you might smell the patchouli more, but then some days you might smell the monoi more, because you just feel like you are, like, a floating butterfly, flying on the beach. These scents are so complex. I think they give you a feeling, I hope, of joy and nostalgia in some way or another.
On the best-smelling person she’s ever met
Alana O’Herlihy—you know, @lilmami_lani? My Hawaiian queen. Her skin is the softest skin. She always smells incredible and has coconut butter on her, and shea butter. She always has her perfume and her leave-in conditioner in her hair. She always looks perfect and smells perfect. You hug her, and I just feel like I’m like in high school again, having a sleepover with my best friend.
On what happiness smells like
Happiness smells like a ranch—like horses and dirt. I promise you guys, I will not make a cow-poop-smelling fragrance. Just, like, the smell of a barn and, like, fly spray is a really happy smell to me. Just anything in nature, really. I love to just put my face in flowers on the side of the street. April in Texas is beautiful because, like, they just have all these wildflowers everywhere. And you can just pull over, and it’s just like yellow and orange and red flowers. Being able to experience the things that, like, God in the universe has built for us and made for us, that grow from the ground—that’s what keeps me going. There is so much beauty and happiness that is made from the earth. And you don’t have to buy anything, because it’s free! I think that’s a beautiful thing.
Orebella by Bella Hadid is available now at orebella.com and at ulta.com.
This story has been updated since publishing.
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