Hallie Gould

Beauty and wellness have evolved into juggernaut industries over the last decade, and through it all Hallie Gould has been at its beating center. As a beauty editor, she’s had a hand in shaping the way media brands narrate our lives – from social media to trend reporting. In her decade-long career, she‘s contributed to Marie Claire, Elle, Instyle, and now defunct digital-only publications Real Beauty and MIMI, and interviewed celebrities, models, and other notable women and men in the beauty space.

Today, she’s the Associate Editorial Director at Byrdie, where she continues to challenge and shift the narrative of what constitutes beauty, pushing the industry to be more honest and inclusive through hundreds of high-performing stories on wellness, diet, mental health, and body image. We caught up with Hallie near her home in Brooklyn about what it takes to become a writer and nurturing less conventional careers.

Interview by Samantha Bloom

Photography by Hana Lê Van

“

THERE’S SOMETHING REALLY INCREDIBLE ABOUT THE BEAUTY INDUSTRY: IT HAS THE POTENTIAL TO BE SUCH AN INCLUSIVE PLACE.

THERE’S SO MUCH WORK TO BE DONE, DON’T GET ME WRONG. BUT EVERYBODY HAS TO WASH THEIR FACE. EVERYBODY CAN WEAR MAKEUP. EVERYBODY CAN DO THEIR HAIR. EVERYBODY WANTS TO FEEL GOOD. THERE ARE NO SIZES.”

SAMANTHA BLOOM

What’s the most important advice you’ve ever received?

HALLIE GOULD

I have two and they’re both from my dad. He was a lawyer, my mom is a law professor, but they’re both deeply creative and spiritual people. I don’t think law was ever my dad’s passion – he never felt connected to it. I think he did it because he didn’t know what else to do, and becoming a lawyer was an acceptable path. He saw my brother and I were creative people from the start. So when I was growing up, he told us ‘never go to law school.’ That was really helpful: There wasn’t that pressure to do something more conventional. My brother became a chef, and I became a writer.

The second piece of ad vice came when I was trying to figure out how to get a job after graduating college. I knew what I wanted to do, and was lucky what I wanted to do was a specific job. I knew the steps – I could figure out how to get there. That’s really rare in a creative field: If you want to become a famous musician, you can’t just become a famous musician; there’s no playbook for that. After I graduated, I interned at Time Out New York, but I wasn’t making any money. I applied for this job as a recep tionist at the John Barrett Salon. And I called my dad and asked: What’s my move here? Do you think I’m putting off my end goal? And he just said, ‘Look, get a job. It doesn’t have to be the job – just get a job.’ That has served me so well throughout my entire life, the sense that making a choice doesn’t mean you can’t undo it. It doesn’t mean you’re sending yourself down some spiral you can’t get out of. Get a job and it doesn’t have to be the job, and then you learn.

Initially, I thought I wanted to write about fashion. And then I took this job at a hair salon and realized beauty was the area I cared most about. It’s a category where I really have something to say. I took a lot of really wonderful things from that job and met a lot of really wonderful people. I got the chance to see behind the scenes of how it all works with makeup artists and hairstylists. Taking this job that wasn’t supposed to be the job changed my entire trajectory and opened up a ton of doors for me.

SB You must’ve seen some crazy things.

HG I was there for eight months, from 2011 – 2012, and I was a receptionist catering to rich people right after the recession. It was certainly crazy to be in the back room at that salon with all the people that came in… there were a lot of funny characters.

It was a fun and challenging year – I think it’s really important for everyone to work in the service industry. It led me into this behindthe-scenes world and to people I’m still in touch with today who have impacted my life and the industry.

This hairstylist I love, Dhiran Mistry, had just moved from London and was working as John Barrett’s assistant. And he’s since become an editor darling, everybody loves him. That’s something where I’m like, this is a cool thing to be part of.

There’s something really incredible about the beauty industry, it has the potential to be such an inclusive place. There’s so much work to be done, don’t get me wrong. But everybody has to wash their face. Everybody can wear makeup. Everybody can do their hair. Everybody wants to feel good. There are no sizes. That was what drew me to it: being able to write about body image, mental health, and the way beauty intersects with identity, confidence, and community. Reaching other people has always felt really empowering and exciting.

SB Who do you call for advice?

HG My close friend, Lauren Valenti. She and I met through work, when we were both at Marie Claire. I think it’s not entirely rare to have a really great friendship with your coworker, but our friendship became so much bigger than working together. We’re not coworkers anymore – she’s now the Senior Beauty Editor at Vogue – but I don’t know where I would be without someone who understood all of those facets of my life; everything about work as well as all the stuff outside of work. I believe her to be the most hardworking person I’ve ever met, and the most talented – she should get any job over me. So I don’t think we ever had to deal with competition, we both put each other up for jobs at certain points. It’s just a super lovely, rare experience to have a friend like that; a real cohort.

SB Who is your unlikeliest mentor?

HG To say my mom would seem likely, but for me it’s unlikely because she is not some body who feels really strongly about beauty or wellness, or skincare, or suncare, or makeup. She still calls Byrdie a blog and asks me if I’m going to “blog” about this or that. But I think the way I carry myself in my career has a lot to do with what she instilled in us from the beginning.

My parents were both defense lawyers. They met on strike for Legal Aid, and that part of them made a difference for me in my life. And now – navigating being online, having to have a perspective, having to be thoughtful, to educate yourself – I’m really thankful to have had parents who made that a priority. She was the breadwinner in our family and we grew up in a place where that was not usually the case. No disrespect to full-time moms – I think that’s probably the hardest job in the entire world – but I had a mom who was really focused on her career. And I think a lot of my ambition came from that; she was always a staunch feminist even before I knew what that meant. I really appreciate the way she raised us. My brother and I talk about this all the time: We had to sink or swim, and we both ended up successful because we had to, but also because she made clear: “I’m not always gonna save you.”

ANYO.NE/HALLIE