Though Bella Hadid has been in the spotlight for over a decade, there’s still something refreshingly open about the Palestinian-Dutch supermodel. When we meet over Zoom on a Monday afternoon, she’s bare-faced, hair swept back with a simple black cloth headband. After the pleasantries that come along with meeting any person for the first time, we get personal—fast.
“One day, I woke up and just saw something on Instagram,” she shares, not revealing the catalyst for what many now see as her wellness transformation. “I knew I needed to make changes in my life to become happy with myself, so I chose to go through this journey. I went through a lot of things mentally, and at one point it got pretty dark. I’m a sensitive person and going through pain is the only way to grow.” Too relatable—in the past decade, there have been countless studies dedicated to negative effects of social media on mental health.
Through the pain and her ongoing battle with Lyme Disease (and the host of physical and cognitive symptoms that come along with it), Hadid began to focus on things that helped her feel grounded, made her happy, and in her words, helped her “remember who I am.” Right before our call, she was actually doing one of those grounding practices. “I don’t have a cold plunge here, but I have a little pool and it’s freezing. I jumped in before I started my calls and I feel a lot better.”
Another one of those practices is essential oils, which led to her new beauty venture Orebella, out today. She says that while on a trip two years ago to visit Palestinian relatives living in Washington, D.C., “my dad and I were playing backgammon by the fireplace when I discovered my uncle Mahmoud used to make essential oils. I had no idea.” Things were already in motion for the yet-to-be-named Orebella, which combines a play on the translation of the model’s surname into English (Hadid means iron) and her first name.
Hadid believes in signs, kismet, and the like—and learning this fact about her family’s entrepreneurial history made her feel like “I have my aunties and my amos [uncles in Arabic] all with me and blessing me all the time.”