Rhode's first blush might have been the worst-kept secret in beauty. Before the Hailey Bieber-founded brand officially revealed that the wait list for Rhode's Pocket Blush, a six-shade lineup of Polly Pocket-sized cream sticks, was opening on June 10, it had not-so-subtly flooded TikTok and Instagram. Mega-influencers like Matilda Djerf and Alix Earle doused their cheeks with baby pink tubes in videos reposted by Rhode's official account; so did estheticians and casual Rhode fans anointed with early samples.
Even Bieber was sharing "cheek peeks" of Rhode's blush online weeks in advance. (The product was in development for even longer than that: Bieber told Vogue it took two years to land on the final formula.) First she dropped a tube into the mise-en-scene of a casual maternity outfit roundup on Instagram, then she tapped a coral-pink shade across her cheekbones in a "Get Ready With Me" relatably filmed from the front seat of her car. The more videos I watched, the more I found myself fantasizing about using Rhode blush before I got my hands on it myself. Bieber and her cadre of testers made the application process look fun and the shades look naturally flushed—a combination I was sure it wouldn't be as easy to achieve IRL as it looked online. I wasn't the only one eager to try them out: "My bank account is ready," more than one commenter wrote on Bieber's posts.
