Pink Miasma: Experiential Shopping at Glossier Williamsburg
Dr. Emily Lynell Edwards visits the new Glossier store in Williamsburg and reports back.
The Williamsburg Glossier store opened semi-recently in the late fall of 2022, and as a Glossier devotee, naturally I had to visit. With in-store shopping experiences bouncing back with a vengeance after the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Williamsburg Glossier promised not only every covetable shade of Balm Dot Com, but more importantly, an Instagrammable backdrop.
Glossier is a venture-funded beauty company founded by Emily Weiss, who started the beauty blog Into the Gloss in 2010. Born in 2014, Glossier did two things differently: they championed the DTC (direct-to-consumer) e-commerce model and popularized the YBB (You But Better) look—also known as the “clean girl” aesthetic before it was reinvented on TikTok. Weiss emphasized the importance of skincare as foundational to a beauty routine, a novel proposition for a makeup brand at the time. Glossier reveled in an It Girl ethos and benefited from a cult of enthusiasm and authenticity as micro-influencers featured their products, a marketing strategy that in the mid-2010s was still fresh. Now, despite growing pains including reports of toxic work culture, layoffs, and critiques of market obsolescence in an increasingly competitive beauty market, Glossier has sought to reposition itself as relevant and steadfast through the opening of brick-and-mortar locations that lean into experiential shopping.
While the experience of shopping at Glossier Williamsburg is equal parts humiliating and enchanting, if you are in your late twenties and still a Glossier customer instead of sensibly moving on to more effective prestige brands or even starting a baby Botox regime, you must absolutely go.
As a twenty-eight-year-old woman who is now too old to be cast on The Bachelor and therefore edging into hag territory, I’ve been using Glossier’s prettily packaged products for some time, but only ever ordering online. From the Universal Pro-Retinol to stave off the ravages of time to the Milky Jelly Cleanser used to wash away smeared mascara from crying about climate change and my 401k, I am well-versed in Glossier’s pinkwashed suite of creams, serums and delightfully flavored Balm Dot Coms that are regularly deposited on my doorstep.
But would a hike to the physical store be worth it? I set out to answer that question last weekend.
If you thought you could simply waltz into the store after picking up groceries at the only Trader Joe’s in Brooklyn with a parking lot, you’d be wrong. A key part of the Glossier Williamsburg experience is being forced to wait in a long line of energetic teens and women toting shaggy haired boyfriends, iced Americanos in hand, before getting to a door guarded by a dewy young woman in the signature pink jumpsuit. The atmosphere is less Studio 54 and more M&M’s World at capacity. Rumor has it during opening weekend they had a DJ outside.
Once you are finally allowed inside the store, you’re confronted with a fever dream hybrid of Dillard’s makeup counter, Star Trek control room and the Barbie movie mood board, all in that much derided yet still somehow soothing shade of millennial pink. Products are organized in beautiful displays, with samples to be picked up and tested, the rest of the abundance neatly lined up under glass coverings. Special edition items like small totes and hoodies are displayed in back-lit caverns in the wall. If you want to try a sample of a product, you’ll be muscling your way to each station.
Once you place your order, you can wait, watching as some strange mechanical rotating machine dispenses products on claws behind a counter. Who is behind the machine filling orders? We’ll never know.
Another part of this brand of experiential shopping is that you can’t simply pick up what you want and buy it—no, you have to order your selections and pay by card (I wasn’t brave enough to try cash and get rejected). Beautiful, perky employees flit around wielding tablets, ready to pounce on you and take your order. While you might get to feel slightly like an insider if they have your email on file, you will probably be unlucky. Either the attendants will come up to you too soon and you’ll beg for another minute as you look wildly around, pawing for a sample of the Invisible Shield sunscreen, or you’ll have to fight to catch their eye as they’re adding up the totals of five thirteen-year-olds getting different shades of glittery Lidstar. Eventually I was able to place an order—After Baume to repair my moisture barrier (which I can report works well and doesn’t cause breakouts even when used day and night), Universal Pro-Retinol for the ravages of time, and the tried-and-true Milky Jelly Cleanser.
Once you place your order, you can wait, watching as some strange mechanical rotating machine dispenses products on claws behind a counter. Who is behind the machine filling orders? We’ll never know. The atmosphere is Santa’s workshop meets Triangle Shirtwaist Factory. The employees behind the counter separating you from the machine yell out various names: “Sara!” “Evie!” “Emily!” You can sit on the boyfriend/dad couch while you wait, which is comfortable, tubular, and pink. However, since many customers are literally twelve years old, they may squish you and sit on your jacket, having not yet mastered the concept of personal space.
One of the key reasons you might want to drag yourself out of the comfort of your home to visit the Williamsburg Glossier is not simply to see your little bag come down the contraption, which you will have to fight another teen Emily for who will only relent once she sees the old-people retinol, but to be gifted a special Brooklyn-specific freebie. In this case, I snagged a little pink netted bag which I can stuff avocados in. Once you finally acquire your bag of goods and escape, a lifetime has passed. You have been irrevocably changed.
While the experience of shopping at Glossier Williamsburg is equal parts humiliating and enchanting, if you are in your late twenties and still a Glossier customer instead of sensibly moving on to more effective prestige brands or even starting a baby Botox regime, you must absolutely go. The line, the tablet weirdness, the crushing crowd, the Dr. Seuss-inspired claw machine are all worth it. As Regina George’s mom says in Mean Girls: “You girls keep me young.” And that’s precisely what the pink miasma of Glossier will do for you.