Glossier Showroom Tour | Beauty in the City

I actually meant to post this Glossier showroom tour a few weeks before the Glow Recipe pop up tour (which you can read here) but a few problems arose delaying this post until today. But because this is my second shop "tour" in so many weeks, I thought it would be fun to turn this into a series where I share tours of various beauty shops in the city!

If you follow me on Instagram (@sharmtoaster), then you may know that I want to start sharing more lifestyle content on Instagram and here on my blog-- personal style, travel, food, that kinda stuff. I think this series will be a sweet spot between said lifestyle content and beauty content. Part of the reason I want to start this series is not only to share all the amazing beauty stores in the city with all of you, but also to push me to take advantage of all the cool places that exist in the city. While I saw and visited so many places while living in LA, I still regret not visiting even more! I have no idea where life will take me so I want to take advantage of living near to the city at the moment.

I'm not 100% sold on the name for this series, but I'm rolling with it for now. If you have a witty name that you would like to share with me, please do 😉

Onto Glossier!

If you're familiar with the beauty blogging world, chances are you've heard of Glossier. If you haven't, it's a beauty brand started by Emily Weiss aka the founder of Into the Gloss. And if you haven't heard of Into the Gloss, it's one of the OG beauty blogs that has now been built into an entire empire-- including Glossier.

Late last year Glossier opened up a permanent display showroom in downtown Manhattan. Prior to the opening of their showroom, their products were solely available online. At the showroom you can swatch their entire lineup of products as well as purchase everything!

The showroom is located in the penthouse of 123 Lafayette St. You can spot the little Glossier flag from down the street so you know you're at the right building. They also have a salesgirl manning the door of the building and directing you in the right direction!

At the time of this post their hours are Monday through Friday 12 pm- 8 pm, Saturday 11 am- 7 am, and Sunday 11 am- 6 pm. To be on the safe side I recommend double checking their hours here before visiting.

Once you hop in the elevator you'll notice a bunch of stickers around the penthouse button. By chance I found out that the building is actually the same one that houses the Into the Gloss/ Glossier offices (not to sound creepy or anything...) The last time I was at the showroom taking the elevator up, it stopped on another floor for a Glossier employee who was on the elevator with me. When the doors opened I recognized the space from Emily's Instagram stories. I also ran into Emily the last time I stopped at the store (and had an internal fan girl moment!)

The space itself is very open and perfectly fits the Glossier aesthetic. It's minimal yet chic, just like their products. The walls feature some of their posters which you may be familiar with if you've ever ordered from their online shop. In addition to the posters, there are also multiple mirrors perfect for selfie taking as well as upbeat mottos plastered along said mirrors like "you look good." They also have polaroid cameras and sheets of their stickers scattered throughout the store.

If you're familiar with Glossier than you might know that they're excellent at their branding and marketing-- the showroom is no exception. It's essentially Instagram bait-- you can't visit the showroom and not share it on social media.

All the salesgirls are dressed in Glossier pink coveralls and I'm not gonna lie, now I kind of want a pair too. Everyone I chatted with there was extremely friendly, genuine, and approachable. Before I visited the showroom I kind of assumed shopping at the showroom would be like shopping at MAC (where 9 times out of 10 the salespeople are aloof.) There's nothing specific about Glossier that indicated they would have a "too cool for you" vibe, but on the other hand the target demographic for the store is trendy, 20-something, female New Yorkers. I will happily admit I was wrong!

Like I said earlier in the post, you can test out the entire lineup of Glossier products at the showroom. And they have multiple testers for everything 🙌   If you're interested in purchasing anything you can head on up to the checkout counter as the only thing you'll find on the floor are testers. Personally I think that was a very smart move on their part. Despite the fact that there are 4 or 5 testers for every product, you know that there would be some entitled dumbass out there who would grab a closed box and insist on making a tester for his or herself from a product that was meant to be sold.

While writing this post I realized that I forgot to take photos of the brow boys-- which funnily enough is my favorite out of all the Glossier products. SO even though I didn't include any photos of the boy brow testers, they do have them!

My next one or two posts is going to be talking more about Glossier as a brand as well as reviewing their actual products. I've gotten so many questions over the past few months if certain products are worth the price or if Glossier in general lives up to all the hype, I figured it was time to dedicate a post to the brand.

I hope you enjoyed this post and this series! I'm excited to share more stores from the city. The next shop to be featured in the series may be Too Cool for School

since I already have a ton of photos of the store from the last time I was there. Some of my favorite beauty stores that I'm excited to share are oo35mm, New London Pharmacy, and Urban Outfitters Harold Square flagship store. I'm also excited to discover and visit new stores like the Credo Beauty shop in Brooklyn that opened this past week. The Christophe Robin pop-up is also on my list thanks to Cat's post about the brand.

Do you have any stores you would like to see me feature in the series? Any stores that I must visit?