Glossier Opens New Flagship Store in SoHo
The company’s first permanent store opened on Nov. 8.
Popular beauty company Glossier opened its first permanent flagship store in SoHo Thursday, marking the brand’s transition from being a primarily online retailer.
Known chiefly among teens and young adults for their simple, dream-like products ranging from skincare to makeup, Glossier has been rising on the scene since 2014, utilizing soft and dewy aesthetics to solidify its signature look and gain popularity — and the new Glossier Flagship is just another expression of the company’s creativity and charismatic spirit.
Before the Glossier Flagship store opened on 123 Lafayette St., there was the Glossier Showroom, the only place in the city where you could buy Glossier products in person. Most of Glossier’s sales are conducted online, but if you were lucky enough to visit the Showroom (and there was often a line down the block to get in), you were met with a bubbly pink room full of Glossier’s skincare, fragrance, and beauty products arranged in a manner so pleasing to the shopper that it became a popular destination to take Instagram-worthy pictures.
Glossier’s packaging is known for its simplicity yet aesthetic appeal, and its physical manifestation does not leave these values behind. In fact, as you enter the rose-quartz door of the Glossier Flagship, you’re met with a grand, burgundy staircase with a shell-like concave roof leading you to the main room. Even entering the store is an experience in and of itself, as you leave the cold and gray SoHo sidewalk and enter a world that promotes self-care and comfort in your own skin.
Upstairs, the Glossier Flagship is like what the Showroom was, but amplified by one hundred. Glossier has cleverly installed warm-toned lights throughout the whole store to make you appear to be glowing from any of the many mirrors lining the walls; colorful flowers are interspersed between tables full of Glossier’s products, ranging from their famous Boy Brow gel to their newer line of fragrances.
The entire atmosphere is warm and exciting, and, of course, visually appealing, with employees clad in baby-pink jumpsuits and white Reebok’s available to help you at a moment’s notice and entire room set aside for posing with structures of giant Boy Brows.
“I loved the overall design of the store,” said NYU freshman Rhia Hylton, who visited the Flagship the day of its opening. “It was so clean and fresh. The decor was beautiful, and there were lots of things for the customers to interact with.”
Glossier as a company champions diversity, too, with models of nearly every skin tone apparent in their ads, and concealers and blushes available in shades to suit every complexion. Their pledge to diversity doesn’t merely reach their products, however, and actually influences the store itself.
“I love the pictures of the women of Glossier on the walls,” said Zeynab Kwara, an NYU freshman, of the new store. “Ranging from different races and cultures, it shows that Glossier caters to everyone. It was very refreshing.”
The Glossier Flagship reminds one of an upscale club mixed with a ’50s beauty parlor mixed with what one might imagine heaven looks like — a long red sofa lines the back wall for weary companions of those who want to shop, and aside from that, it’s still flowers and lights and lo-fi music and mirrors galore. No matter where you turn, there are Glossier products for you to test out, making it impossible not to buy something (I myself planned to leave with no purchases and ended up with three).
“The shopping experience was really cool, too,” Hylton said. “You got to look around and try out all of the products without having to carry them with you.”
Indeed, Glossier employs an efficient and futuristic checkout process, in which you tell an employee with an iPad what you’d like to buy, they swipe your card, and minutes later, your products arrive neatly packaged in a sealed bag with your name on it at the front counter from an unseen stockroom, with the added bonus of free stickers. Lines are nonexistent at Glossier — rather, the efficiency and grace with which you receive your products only encourages you to buy things even more.
“I remember going to the original Glossier Showroom and it was just a really small penthouse,” Kwara recalled. “I still love the old store, but now it has become bigger and better. It truly ‘glossed up.’”
