Why Does Everyone Want Rhode?
By: Sheza Qasim, Assistant Editorial Director Edited by: Isha Gill
There is a reason you can recognize a Rhode product before you even see the logo.
The packaging is minimal. The colors are neutral. The products are constantly on your TikTok feed. Hailey Bieber is photographed carrying, using and talking about them. Even the brand's name has become part of the beauty vocabulary.
Topicals is a Black-owned skincare brand founded by Olamide Olowe in 2020. Olowe created Topicals with a focus on making conversations around skin conditions more normalized and less embarrassing. The brand aimed to give voices and products to women with darker skin with issues that the mainstream media didn’t recognize.
These two brands sell very similar products, like eye patches and lip balms; yet, one is more popular than the other.
Hailey Bieber’s beauty brand has practically become synonymous with the “clean girl” aesthetic. The peptide lip treatments are everywhere, the minimalist packaging has become instantly recognizable and TikTok seems to find a new Rhode product to obsess over every other week. Rhode’s popularity isn’t exactly surprising. Hailey Bieber already had millions of followers before she launched the brand, and her personal beauty aesthetic had become a trend of its own. The “glazed donut” look, minimalist makeup and a barely-there skincare routine helped launch Bieber almost as a beauty guru.
Rhode was also recently bought out by ELF for approximately 1 billion dollars, again showing how marketing and Hailey Bieber’s influence can lead to bigger deals versus smaller beauty brands.
Topicals, meanwhile, built its audience in a completely different way.
Topicals mostly gained traction through good reviews and social media visibility but also relies on celebrity marketing and creative shoots.
We often treat popularity as proof of quality. If everyone on TikTok owns something, it must be good, right?
Not necessarily.
In 2024, Rhode faced backlash from beauty creator Golloria for the Rhode Pocket Blush leaving darker skin tones looking ashy. Earlier last year, the Rhode Peptide Lip Treatment received backlash for being grainy after a few uses, and many users had to boil the product to return it to a proper lip balm. Rhode’s eyepatches even received some backlash for their high price for only a one-time use product.
But that doesn’t mean every Rhode product is bad. The eyepatches, blushes, and lip liners have great reviews. It's just important to recognize that other brands are doing beauty and skincare better than Rhode and to get out of our bubbles, exploring more brands.
But the truth is, if we see the same product enough times, we start wanting it. No matter if we see it through sponsored content, good PR or even bad reviews. And when that product is attached to someone we already know and follow, the desire becomes even stronger.
This isn’t to say Rhode is a bad brand or that nobody should buy its products. If you love your Rhode lip treatment, keep using it. There’s nothing wrong with enjoying a celebrity-founded brand.
But maybe we should be asking ourselves why certain brands get so much of our attention in the first place.
Because while we’re obsessing over the next Rhode drop, brands like Topicals are continuing to create products, build communities and compete for space in an industry where celebrity status can sometimes feel like its own form of advertising.
Supporting smaller or independently founded brands doesn’t mean giving up the products you love. It can simply mean looking beyond whatever the algorithm is currently telling you to buy.
© 2026 by FETCH COLLECTIVE
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