As the world rekindles its obsession with Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy this year, Rhode founder Hailey Bieber has locked in on a new It girl to rep her brand: Sarah Pidgeon, who plays Bessette-Kennedy on Ryan Murphy’s Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bessette.
“Playing Carolyn has been such an incredible experience,” Pidgeon tells me over the phone. She’s fresh off the SAG Actor Awards red carpet and marveling at this moment in her career—but also approaching it with a lesson she learned from portraying Bessette-Kennedy. “There’s so much to be said about a delineation between your public and private life. When transforming [into Carolyn], I tried to understand her relationship with being perceived and presentation. I learned a lot about what storytelling you can do with fashion.”
Beauty is a part of that storytelling too. The first time I encountered Pidgeon it was in the Tony Award–winning play Stereophonic, in which she played a singer-songwriter named Diana. Pidgeon was a brunette then (her natural color) with long, ’70s-style waves. Not long after that, she would go through a whirlwind blonde transformation to become Bessette-Kennedy. Many sessions of bleach ensued.
“When I see photos of myself with brown hair, it feels just as shocking as when I first saw myself with blonde,” she says of her chameleon-like change for Love Story. “But I feel like I’m entering a new chapter of my life, and to come into this with a different head of hair is exciting. My clothes feel different on me with my blonde hair. I’m attracted to different colors now.”
“It took quite a significant amount of time to get my hair this light, so I’m going to keep rocking the blonde hair until I change my mind or have to change my hair for another role,” she continues. “There are so many different tones and shades of blonde to explore.”
When I ask how she now feels about pink—a color sometimes associated with blondes à la Barbie—the answer is surprising. “It’s funny, because I think I had more of an aversion to pink when I was a brunette,” Pidgeon says. Cut to just the night before our conversation, when she wore a pastel pink Balenciaga dress to the SAG Actor Awards. “I do get that there’s a natural association between blondes and pink,” she goes on. “But I actually love using the color, especially when it comes to products like blush; it feels so fresh.” Her Rhode campaign reveals two new Pocket Blush shades, raspberry pink Teacup and warm red Candy Apple, as well as two new Peptide Lip Treatments (pearly pink Sweet Pea and mauve Pretzel). New phone cases are coming too, all available to shop on March 9 (though you can sign up for the wait list now).
These new shades are an exciting moment for Rhode, as they come from a new source of inspiration: the brand’s most loyal fans. Bieber and her team actually crowdsourced through social media voting to see which colors Rhode shoppers wanted most—and voila!—Pretzel and Sweet Pea were born.
The ultraflush of her Rhode campaign has Pidgeon thinking about blush in general. “There are so many different kinds of blushes, but what makes me blush is when somebody really sees you,” she says. “When somebody can perforate that sense of performance you have up against the world. But something I’ve yet to master in my craft is being able to summon a blush.” Until that happens, at least she has the Pocket Blush to help.
