Bella Hadid is going back to her roots — and she's getting there through the power of smell.
Last year, the model made her first steps into the world of scents with the launch of her parfum brand Ôrebella (pronounced aura-bella, get it?). Since then, she's been growing her collection of carefully curated scents, each one designed to be a sensory reflection of a different part of herself. “In theory, all of our Ôrebella scents are different parts of my personality,” she says.
“For Blooming Fire it was that feeling of being with your family, or your parents, or your best friends at the beach when you were young," she tells GLAMOUR of her first scent. “That feeling of wrapping yourself up in a towel as the sun's going down, and there's that almost sunscreen-y, salty, sweet smell.” Window2Soul is her “white flower gardenia,” while Salted Muse was “just about being a beach girl.” Nightcap is her as a “stabilising rock.”
Now, a new scent is joining the Ôrebella family: Eternal Roots, a sweet lychee raspberry parfum with a woody, androgynous undertone. While all of Hadid's scents are inspired by the building blocks of her past, Eternal Roots is all about the specific tastes and smells that defined her childhood. “Growing up on a ranch in Santa Barbara," she once said, "I would go to school during the day, then go straight to the barn and ride my horses, have dinner with my family every night at 6pm, do my homework, and go to sleep."
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Eternal Roots brings it all back, combining lychee, which she drank with her sister as a kid, raspberry, her go-to gelato flavour, and vetiver for a woody, earthy feel inspired by nature. It's the smell of lazy, happy summer days between the horse barn and the beach.
As Hadid muses on the personal origins of Eternal Roots, I can't help but admire her poetic approach to scent – her belief in the power of smell to take us back to the most precious moments of our lives. And naturally, I find myself itching be part of this evocative, poetic world by ordering every single one of the scents she has made so far. After all, who wouldn't want to smell like Bella Hadid?
These are my honest thoughts.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Congratulations on the launch! Let's start by talking about Eternal Roots. What does the new scent smell like?
She is really sweet because of the lychee, which is amazing, but also still has grit from the vetiver and pink pepper, which makes it a lot more androgynous. I like that juxtaposition. It is one of our sweeter scents, but I do think that the woodiness levels from the other ingredients come in, and it makes this perfect, weird juxtaposition of the most beautiful, lovely scent.
What inspired you to create this scent?
When we do our brainstorms, we speak a lot about nostalgia. I want to keep everything very true to who I am now, but also to bring something back from childhood. For Blooming Fire it was that feeling of being with your family, or your parents, or your best friends at the beach when you were young. That feeling of wrapping yourself up in a towel as the sun's going down, and there's that almost sunscreen-y, salty, sweet smell. Then Window2Soul is my white flower gardenia that I always wanted to channel from childhood. Salted Muse was just about being a beach girl.
All of them have to do with my family and my lineage. But for this scent specifically, the nostalgia does go back to the lychee. Lychee is a very nostalgic childhood taste for me. I don't know why, but we used to have these little cups of lychee when we were kids. So, that sweet smelling lychee I've always loved. There is also raspberry blossom in it, too, and raspberry is my favourite gelato flavour. Since I was a kid, I would always get a scoop of raspberry and a scoop of chocolate.
So, we kind of go through this brainstorming – pulling out all of the things I love, the things from my childhood that I miss, and then how it incorporates into my soul now. And the element of mother nature. And then putting that all together.
Nostalgia is so important – like, the back of my phone is me as a kid. Because I get to moving very quickly now as an adult and I just kind of want to be able to channel that [feeling of childhood] as much as possible now and be able to give that back to anybody who's willing to take it. I think we all do deserve to find that inner child again.
Blonde, brunette – it’s the best of both worlds.
Smells can be so powerful in bringing us back to specific times in our lives. Do you have a first scent memory?
A cardamom tea that my grandma used to make. And then also – I feel like it's the barn. It's really bad, but like, literally horse poop. I think as a child, it was really the smells of nature.
There was also a certain fragrance that my mom used to wear when I was young, before she got sick and stopped wearing perfume. And I do always go back to that scent. I'd be curious now to go see what those ingredients were and see how they come back in what I'm doing now.
Is there a smell that instantly reminds you of home?
I think it's definitely a combination of lavender, lemon balm and jasmine. And I think, to be honest, the smell of home is hugging my mom. She smells like home.
Could you take us through your perfect day in smells?
I would wake up lying by glass windows just a little bit open. You can hear the ocean, and there's a swift smell of salt water in the wind. I would hope that I could just stay in bed all day and these spells could just slowly come through my window.
Also I'd love to just walk through a garden. There's something so beautiful about a beautifully done garden. I imagine old white seats in little nooks and crannies. Just sitting under a tree and smelling these different smells of the different flowers would be amazing.
Then I would walk past a coffee shop. Hopefully they're making great coffee so it smells delicious right out the window. And oh, and I would walk past the gelato shop, too, because any place that is making fresh waffle cones, I'll probably end up stopping by. That's a nostalgic smell for me, too. If I could make a waffle cone fragrance, I would – I don't know if anybody would buy it, but I definitely would try! And then I would probably go to sleep with the smell of a pizza box on my legs while I'm in bed and a candle that is lit. A Window2Soul candle. That's what I would go to sleep to every night.
What's a smell that can instantly calm you down if you feel stressed?
Honestly, lavender. It's super generic, but it really, actually helps me a lot. Or peppermint helps me.
If your friends and family could describe you in a smell, what do you think it would be?
Probably Window2Soul. But, you know, it's funny, I'm all of them. I'm Window2Soul, I'm Nightcap, I'm Blooming Fire and Salted Muse. And now Eternal Roots. I'm a combination of all of them together. Because in theory, all of our Ôrebella scents are different parts of my personality. Salted Muse and Nightcap are my stabilising rocks [that represent] the work ethic girl. And then Window2Soul and Blooming Fire are my whimsical side.
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