THE IT-GIRL INDEX
By Hope Donovan

There is no one I resent more than Hailey Bieber. Formerly Hailey Baldwin (yes, of those Baldwin’s), she’s a sometimes model, occasional media personality, recent celebrity-brand skincare founder—and wife of the Justin Bieber. As the nepotism gods would have it, Hailey has built a cult-like following amongst young women for what one might mistakenly describe as a sense of style.

Chic? Sure! Trendy? Indubitably. Worthy of countless Pinterest boards dedicated to “Hailey Bieber Street Style Inspo” and features in Vogue? I’m not convinced. Her lack of discernible intrigue itself appears to be the object of a Beatles-caliber mass hysteria. Her straightforward sense of style, compounded by a lukewarm social media presence and highly sanitized public persona, has been met with an abundance of nearly entirely organic media attention. If she gives us nothing, what is there to love? At the same time, what is there to hate?

When the world was defined by uncertainty and stress during the pandemic, Hailey became the revered symbol of recession-chic’s trendification. This esteemed status is perhaps why culture has come to worship her, but it’s also why I’ve come to resent her. To me, our enduring cultural obsession with Hailey’s fashion represents the creative depressions that overcome style in times of economic decline.

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It used to be that the moniker ‘celebrity’ was only bestowed upon those who consistently grabbed our attention. Be it talented actors and musicians or models and socialites with big personalities, celebrity was only awarded to the exceptionally talented or intriguing. Although supermodel Kate Moss, for example, was one of the most sought-after women in the fashion industry, her professional success often fell behind the shadow of magazine headlines like “Kate’s on Crack” and “Coke Fiend: She Snorted Cocaine in Nelson Mandela’s House.” Around the same time her career (and partying) reached peak celebrity spectacle, designer Malcolm McLaren explained to the New York Times when “Kate Moss and Christy Turlington open their mouths, you think, They’ve got nothing at all to say. Not that pop stars had that much to say, but this is even less—it’s extraordinary.”

While having talent and having something to say are two very different things—both of which we demand of successful women more than men—it seems that there’s a degree of intrigue associated with personalities that shine brighter in the public eye than the careers that put them in the spotlight. It’s certainly not that Kate Moss did nothing to earn her celebrity status, but the idea that her capacity for hedonistic vacuousness, at least in McLaren’s eyes, made her “extraordinary” speaks to the increasingly secondary nature of talent in the world of celebrity.

This notion of being famous for nohing is not all that new—just ask your grandparents what “those Kardashian girls” do for a living. However, in the nouveau age of the influencer, this notion is a misconception: what the reality stars and socialites of the early 2000s’ did was not nothing, it just wasn’t considered talent. Not every socialite managed to get off the digital pages of Gawker and onto the small screen: the likes of Paris Hilton, Nicole Richie, and Kim Kardashian—all closely connected to talented individuals—harnessed their exceptional wealth and outrageous personalities to earn our attention. The sextape-ification of early 2000s celebrity culture, epitomized by Kim Kardashian’s rapid ascent to reality TV stardom after a leaked tape with Ray-J, marked a new era of celebrity outrageousness. It-girls earned notoriety for partying and spending exorbitant amounts of money with neither abandon nor any apparent consequence. The exceptional nothingness of the outrageous “celebutantes” was different from that which was ascribed to Kate Moss—these young women embraced the material indulgence and intellectual shallowness assumed of them to achieve celebrity status.

Hailey’s celebrity is the result of her proximity to talent: from her pop star husband and renowned acting family to her Kardashian-Jenner besties, Hailey has multiple streams of passive social capital keeping her in the spotlight and mitigating any risk of sinking if she doesn’t feel like swimming. All Hailey has to do is show up to events—dressed appropriately—and her husband’s unfashionable “quirks” will make her outfits look exceptional in comparison.

Her public feuds with Justin’s longtime ex Selena Gomez garnered a great deal of media attention—again, mostly negative—towards Hailey, but it also left a lot to be desired in terms of the intrigue and outrageousness we ask of celebrities in exchange for our attention. Compared to the explosive it-girl feuds of Hollywood history, Hailey’s passive-aggressive taunts on social media looked like they came straight out of the high school mean-girl handbook, producing a shock value that would go undetected by the Richter scale and yet dominated social media for weeks. If the most interesting part of her role in the feud, however, was trying to decipher whether or not she was trying to make subtle digs at Selena’s newly laminated brows— didn’t we do all the work of an online feud for her? And yet, as soon as the hate spiraled beyond the offense—as if she had done anything to deserve it in the first place—we laid down arms and ran to her defense. All but a minute before we apologized, we demanded an apology.

She embodies neither Kate Moss’s exceptional ennui nor the Kardashian’s material indulgence. To me, she represents nothing more than a slick-back bun.

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If not her talent or personality, it’s her lack of “vibe” that makes her appealing. She evidently has everything, yet unlike other celebrities, she does nothing exceptional with it. She has an unattainably glamorous life that tantalizes our escapist desire for celebrity gossip, but she doesn’t do or wear anything that makes us feel inadequate or lacking—it’s accessible without being in reach.

For this reason, I would like to introduce a new recession indicator: The Hailey Bieber Index.

As a contemporary iteration of the lipstick index, which is the theory that sales of affordable luxuries increase during economic downturns, the Hailey Bieber Index works similarly to dupe culture and de-influencing trends—the trendiness of what is simple and practical increases in times of economic decline. Under the functionally-chic umbrella of recessioncore that made headlines in January of 2023 as an aesthetic that emphasizes minimalism and simplicity as a reflection of the widespread economic hardship experienced during recessions, the Hailey Bieber Index posits that if people can’t reasonably afford a full leather ensemble but still want to be on-trend, they turn to celebrities with easily reproducible styles for inspiration.

Celebrities and fashion houses, in turn, tend to tone down the glitz and glamor by opting for natural makeup looks and minimalist jewelry on the red carpet in order to keep their appeal and, perhaps, visually negate the reality that recessions tend to make the rich richer. As a result, Hailey Bieber’s oversized New York Jets t-shirt and biker shorts—a look that hasn’t been original since Princess Diana debuted it in the 80s—becomes the peak of fashion under the misnomer “Hailey Bieber Style.” Even if her t-shirt is an exorbitantly priced piece of post-ironic vintage, it makes us feel good to see a celebrity wearing something we can recreate just by stealing it from our dad’s closet.

In a recession, purchases must be useful, practical, and necessary. Any open pursuit of individualism that involves nonessential expenses is condemned as a tone-deaf squandering of scarce resources. And when forced down a certain path by financial necessity, it can be difficult to watch others pursue their personal passions. Inversely, when someone who has the freedom to take any path they want chooses our path—especially someone with not one, but two celebrity surnames—we feel validated by the aesthetic appeal of what has been prescribed to us. This might be why an economically depressed, pandemic-fatigued culture loved (and even invested in) Hailey Bieber: she doesn’t offer anything that makes one in less-than-glamorous circumstances feel inadequate.

However, it’s not likely that Hailey is thinking about our egos in a post-pandemic economy when getting dressed for the day. She, as an extension of her style, is an unintended beneficiary of the times. And wouldn’t you know it, as the global economy improves, the internet has turned against her.

We are now entering a post-COVID-era of revelry that has invigorated an aesthetic cultural absurdism. Having left our apartments and rejoined society, existentialist maximalism has become one of the many ways in which people are beginning to celebrate the beauty of not just being alive, but being able to go out into the world and enjoy what life has to offer. However, while recessioncore is on its way out of the mainstream after almost three years, it is worth recognizing that the staunch Hailey Bieber loyalist is by no means a dying breed. The many adherents to the popular “clean girl” aesthetic, which has anointed Hailey as patron saint of the minimalist “no-makeup makeup” look it emphasizes, demonstrate the enduring influence of the pandemic and the continued need for the comfort and familiarity Hailey unwittingly provided.

With the end of COVID-19 in reach, we began to toss the same looks aside in favor of more vibrant displays of individuality—throwing Hailey to the curb as one might cast aside last season’s most popular accessory. This reveals a significant distinction in Hailey’s fluctuating popularity: the 2020 economic depression that propelled her recessioncore rise to the top lasted only two months—the shortest recession on record in the US. Perhaps, when considered alongside the ceaselessness of the COVID-19 pandemic and its effects on our daily lives, the intensity of Hailey’s sharp rises and quick falls reflects the intensity of this short-lived recession and the unabating influence of the global catastrophe that occasioned it.

Our “animal spirits,” which Adam Smith defined as the noneconomic, irrational motives we often act upon when it comes to our economic interests, are largely responsible for perpetuating the enduring utilitarianism of recessioncore long after the 2020 recession and in the ebbing wake of the pandemic. While the pandemic is no longer a public health emergency and a bull market might be on the horizon, some still cling to Hailey—as an extension of recessioncore—despite the wasted opportunity costs of doing so as the market begins to correct itself. It is undoubtedly an emotionally safer choice to remain in the ashes of struggle and unprecedented uncertainty than is it to rise out of them and risk facing ruin once again. In other words, while the economy and the trend cycle have steered the mainstream toward celebratory displays of prosperity and opulence, the social and economic ravishes of the past three years remain potent enough in recent memory to motivate our animal spirits to act in favor of noneconomic interests such as perceived security.

Through all of this, Hailey never gave us anything dynamic or worthy of strong emotion—anything we feel towards her is a projection of personal circumstance. A study in the British Journal of Psychology found that “people are more susceptible to over-the-top celebrity worship when they’re in a phase of identity adjustment.” The past three years have given the idea of “identity adjustment” a whole new meaning—especially for teens and twenty-somethings navigating early adulthood after a couple years hiatus. Forcing utilitarianism and isolation upon developing minds has led a generation to define themselves against semi-abstract aesthetics that have clear-cut boundaries, allowing adherents to relate their sense of self to the adopted identities of others. Seldom does one come across any form of “outfit inspo” that fails to define itself by the personality markers or niche aesthetic it aims to emulate.

This is perhaps a residual pandemic-era apprehension toward self-direction. We have Hailey’s outfits in our closets—“Hailey Bieber Style” is nothing more than our style. Personal style is intimidating, however, because it requires us to see ourselves for the first time in three-odd years as not just individuals, but individuals with potential beyond a prescribed duty to the collective.

Like an ex-boyfriend’s sweater, “Hailey Bieber Style” represents a rough patch in our lives. The commodification of her streetwear as an aesthetic marker of identity allowed us to throw her away the second we no longer needed the comfort she once provided. If we can discard human beings solely based on our abstract perceptions of what they represent, what does that say about how we view ourselves? The trend cycle is getting shorter and shorter as last month’s coolest jacket becomes next month’s most popular listing on Depop—but does that ruthless cycle include the trendsetters themselves?

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