Colleen Grablick
The makeup and skincare brand Glossier opened its first D.C. storefront on Friday at 3506 M Street, joining five other storefronts in the U.S. and London.
The brand was a game-changer when it first launched online in 2014, marketing products that made you “you, but better” through dewy and simple Instagram photos. Ex-CEO Emily Weiss opened the brand’s first brick-and-mortar in New York in 2016, before expanding into other cities like L.A. Turmoil began in 2020, when the company closed all of its storefronts and laid off workers due to the pandemic. That August, Black employees then came forward with a letter detailing a toxic and racist work environment. Now, the L.A. location has reopened, along with a new store in Seattle, and Weiss resigned in May.
While the future of the brand — and its staying power in the beauty market — is up for debate, the D.C. store opening certainly drew a significant crowd, even at 10:30 on a Friday. As all Glossier stores, it has a theme: aviation. According to a press release, the new location is “inspired by the Jet Age,” and also, the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum. (Ok?) The store also offers an item exclusive to D.C.: a branded luggage tag, the proceeds from which will be donated to Build Metro D.C.
Like most online companies that go on to open IRL stores, Glossier sells the store visit as an “experience,” as much as it sells the actual products. As one of Glossier’s early loyalists (I think I still own a lipstick — Generation G — purchased seven years ago) and someone who unfortunately can’t stop thinking about immersive experiences, I immersed myself in the GlossiAIR opening.
8:00 a.m.: I’m not due at the store for another several hours. I’m sitting in my bedroom with Glossier products laid out in front of me, ready to play the part of a walking online shopping cart. I swipe on several coats of Lash Slick, brush my eyebrows loosely into place with Boy Brow, and dot Cloud Paint sparingly on my cheeks and eyelids. (#beautyhack!) I can’t decide if it’s corny to show up to the store’s opening in a full face of their products – like showing up at a concert wearing the band’s old merch — but it’s kind of the only makeup I’ve owned consistently since 2016.
8:15 a.m.: Preparing for my big visit, I dig back into my inbox to read the press release announcing the store’s opening. Scanning the email thread, my eyes immediately land on the phrase, “This immersive store…” A chill runs down my spine. We’ve been over this.
10:39: I’m making my way up Georgetown’s M Street, and it’s a slightly overcast, quiet Friday morning — aside from what I estimate to be three firetrucks and a handful of police cars positioned up and down the block. One truck is directly in front of the menswear store, Indochino, and several firefighters are milling about outside, but their lack of urgency, no clear smoke, and pedestrians’ nonchalance passing by led me to believe there was not a fire, or at least an active one. I continue up the block, squinting to make out what I believe to be a large mass of people.
10:40: I’m in front of the store and there is certainly a Mass Of People. A large line, larger than I’d expected at 10:40 on a Friday, has unfurled down M Street. I approach two women in light-blue shirts with the signature Glossier “G” screenprinted on the chest and introduce myself. I tell them I’m a reporter, who was told to come early to take pictures of the space before anyone goes in. One of them opens the door, and lets me in.
10:41: The first floor is designed to be a portal of sorts, with mirrors meant to resemble plane windows lining the walls, LED lights dotting the tile floors, and a very stately staircase in the middle of the room beneath a giant skylight. It’s clean, white, and almost sterile. (As someone who has only flown twice, it mostly reminds me of that dreamy scene in Harry Potter And The Deathy Hallows Part Two, where Harry sees the shriveled baby Voldemort and then has a very profound conversation with Dumbledore.) It seems like some parts of the interior are still under construction — off to the left through a doorway, some folks were drilling and hammering.
A crowd of people in pink jumpsuits and blue shirts pour out of a door on my right and head up the stairs, where they circle up. As the only non-jumpsuited or blue-t-shirted person in the room, I start to feel like I’m intruding on something.
10:42: I introduce myself to one of the jump-suited women, whose title had “influencer” in it somewhere. She told me the “editors,” or sales associates, were about to have their pre-opening huddle and suggested this would be a great “content moment.” (As the visit wore on, I concluded GlossiAIR is meant to be more of a content moment than a retail store.) At Glossier, editors are “more than a sales person,” per a job listing online, responsible for maximizing the shoppers’ offline experience.
10:45: I walk up the stairs and step around the group of huddled editors to the merchandise area. Again, as an infrequent flyer, the room feels more like an oddly well-lit womb than an airplane. The lack of angles – arched windows, oval-shaped mirrors tucked into convex wall cut-outs, Glossier’s signature soft pink walls – add a softness. Even the tables, housing a variety of serums and paints and colored eye pencils, look as if they might be squishy to the touch, like memory foam. (They’re not.)
10:47: Curious about the fire situation I passed on my way in, I peek out to the window to see that the trucks and police are still there, and that, still, no one seems to be too concerned about it?
10:55: I move back to the editors’ huddle, taking place in front of a flipboard that’s changing between “WELCOME TO TERMINAL G” and several smiley faces. One editor is holding a goodie bag for the first two customers in line, who had apparently been outside since 7 a.m. A team leader (those are the folks in the blue shirts) instructs editors to chat with customers and ask them questions, like where they’re from, etc. Then, like a sports team, they count down and yell “TAKE OFF DC!”
10:58: The editors have dispersed to different parts of the building, iPads in hand. I realize I haven’t looked at the selfie room yet, and should check it out before the space gets too crowded. It’s a small space, hidden behind the wall that holds the flip-board. There’s a giant mirror (also fashioned to look like a plane window) that reads “YOU LOOK GOOD.” I try tugging on the shade, but it doesn’t close. Just decorative.
10:59: The editors do a rehearsal cheer, before the real cheer that lets me know customers are now entering the building. I position myself at the top of the steps. Nearly everyone walking up has a phone in hand, and stops at the top of the stairs to take pictures or videos of the flip-board, before walking down the ramps into the product area. Great content moment.
I watch a man trail the woman’s he’s with up the stairs. He looks around, at the people and the flipboard, with bewilderment.
11:05: I walk about the product area as people swab and dab and pat products onto their hands, or lean over the counters to review a product in the mirror. The space became very crowded very quickly. The editors downstairs are managing a line, letting folks up in batches to avoid anything becoming too crammed. I’d be remiss if I did not mention that most shoppers coming up the steps (at least those unmasked) have flawless, Glossier-esque skin. I am thankful for my mask hiding the massive, truly monstrous chin zit I’ve been digging at for the past week.
11:10: Unlike in a Sephora or Ulta, Glossier stores don’t shelve products. That’s what the editors and iPads are for. Once a customer decides what they want, they place their order with the editor, who punches it into an iPad. The customer then heads over to the pick-up window to claim the goods. I walk out of the product room and towards the pick-up window, where I talk to Reeya, an editor standing behind a counter. I ask about the conveyer-belt like contraption behind her, and she tells me that it picks up the orders from the warehouse in the basement and carries them to the second floor. She then delivers them to the appropriate customer.
11:11: I ask Reeya if she knows how much the flipboard cost, at the request of a reader, and she says “it was expensive, that’s all I know.” I ask if it’s for sale, and she says no. I end my flipboard investigation. (An inquiring mind later uncovered that the flipboard is made by the brand OatFoundry, whose boards can cost tens of thousands of dollars.)
11:12: Reeya and I get to talking more about her gig, and I admit to her, verbatim, that “I am a Glossier girlie myself.” She says my brows (the brows currently plastered into place with a Glossier product) are those of “a Glossier girlie, I can tell.” The folds of my brain start collapsing in on themselves and I think I might be closest I’ve ever been to truly understanding the definition of an “immersive experience.”
11:20: I’m milling around the product room again, looking at a moisturizer I sort of want to buy but definitely don’t need to buy. The space is filled with a dull roar of very kind “excuse me’s” as people try to get editors’ attention to place orders, or bypass other shoppers to grab a product. I glance out the window again, there’s a group of older adults — standing, ironically enough, in front of another skincare giant LUSH — looking in the direction of Glossier with a puzzled look, asking themselves, I imagine, the perennial question in D.C.: “What is everyone waiting in line for?”
The space is crowding to the point of unease for me, and I make a plan to find a bathroom, as no experience in a new place is finished until you’ve checked out the bathroom. Unfortunately, a very apologetic editor tells me there is no public restroom, but I could try TJ Maxx.
On my way out, I pass the man I saw earlier, the bewildered one. He’s standing off to the side of the room, looking at his phone.
11:23: I head down the steps, out of the womb and back into the portal, and finally back out into the daylight. I walk down the line, which is now stretching around the corner onto the next block, 31st Street.
11:30: Genuinely needing to use a restroom, I walk into the Nike store across the street. (Going from the womb-like atmosphere of Glossier’s fluffy, pink-walled product room into the dark, steel-filled Nike store was like another immersive experience of its own. Was I immersed in a full life cycle, birth to death, in Georgetown? Kinda!)
2:50 p.m. Now home and empty-handed, I realize I didn’t spend any money at GlossiAIR, but I did manage to squeeze nearly 2,000 words out of the experience. Maybe that’s the whole point? It was, indeed, a great content moment.
