The Odyssey of Hailey Bieber

The model and founder takes a break from running her blockbuster skin care brand to join us at the hottest hotel in the Caribbean-and to break down her wild journey to stardom over the past decade.

- By Eileen Cartter

When Hailey Bieber was 18 years old and finding her footing in the modeling world, she would sometimes let slip that she was really into Greek mythology. In 2015, she recommended the Iliad and the Odyssey (the sorts of texts a recent high schooler, as Hailey was then, might be primed to name in a magazine interview) as good travel reads. As she told Wlater that year, "Homer is fascinating."

Hailey, now 26, laughs when I bring this up. "It was my favorite thing I learned in school," she confirms. "I was just so obsessed with the ideas and the stories of these gods and goddesses."

Some years later, Hailey discovered that her middle name, Rhode-which would ultimately serve as the name of the blockbuster skin care brand she launched in 2022-descends from one such ancient deity: Rhode, the protectress and personification of the Dodecanese island of Rhodes. She was the sea-nymph daughter of Poseidon, mighty god of the ocean, and a wife of Helios, incandescent god of the sun; as some myths claim, the island itself was born of their union.

"If you go back, back, back and look," Hailey says of the family name, which was passed down on her mother's side, "it comes from that."