It was a total coincidence, I swear. My partner and I took a short trip to New York last month, and the place where we had a brunch reservation turned out to be right across the street from the Glossier flagship store, and we arrived at the restaurant thirty minutes early, and it was raining, so we had to go inside somewhere.

This was my third visit to a Glossier store, after the original Soho store in 2018 and Glossier Philadelphia last year. The new flagship opened on Spring Street in February 2023. I didn’t expect it to be dramatically different from the other two Glossier stores I’d seen, but I knew that it was larger and it stocked the location-specific merchandise from all the other stores. I’d wanted the Philadelphia mug since it came out in January, but getting to Glossier Philadelphia from where I live is kind of a pain, so I hoped to buy it here.

We arrived at the store just after it opened at 10 am and had the place almost to ourselves! It was absolutely cavernous. (It was also brighter than it appears in these photos; the Glossier store lighting always messes with my camera settings.) I couldn’t get a good shot of the whole space, but it just kept going…

…and going…

…and going…

…and going:

Near the entrance is a room containing a couple of vaporwave-style Greco-Roman busts and the full array of covetable Glossier merchandise items, none of which is regularly available online:

Here are the famous LA flip-phone keychains, which are about one-third the size of the real flip phone on which I texted my college friends about brunch plans:

And here are the Philly (left) and London mugs! I was surprised at how sturdy they felt (given the flimsiness of some of Glossier’s packaging, I had my doubts).

I was also curious to see the new Cloud Paint bronzers, which Glossier released after discontinuing the shimmery Solar Paint formula. Here they are on the right, next to the OG Cloud Paints:

I thought the lightest shade, Sail, might work for me, but it looked very yellow on my skin (it’s the swatch on the right). Again, the lighting is off here, but trust me that it didn’t look like a great shade for cool-toned people.

In the very back is a circular room reminiscent of a fancy airport lounge. This is where you wait to pick up your purchases…

…and where your significant other can enjoy his coffee and chess puzzles while you swatch bronzers:

The room’s decorations include a Sandstone candle ($45) and a G Pal figurine (not for sale):

But wait, aren’t we forgetting something?

The selfie room, right this way!

It’s a mock NYC subway station with a giant “You Look Good” mosaic and a wooden bench just like the ones far below the store, except, you know, clean:

Yeah, I took a selfie. What am I, made of stone?

And here, on our way out, is the rotating Ferris wheel of shopping bags that we glimpsed through the frosted glass of the front window:

Along with the Philly mug, I bought the No. 1 Eye Pencil in Ink, since I hadn’t owned a black eyeliner in several years and wanted to give it another try. My purchase came with the all-important Soho sticker, though I can’t tell what the blurry look of the G is supposed to represent. The frosted window, I guess?

The scene outside the store: a well-dressed woman on her phone, a truck with a “Coffee Guy” sign in the front window and a bumper held on by a red strap, and several men moving an enormous unidentifiable object into the J. Crew across the street:

Tucked into a sturdy cardboard holder inside the box, my mug survived the train trip back to Philly:

The Mug Philadelphie holds eleven ounces of your favorite beverage. I’ve drunk coffee from it a few times, but I’m nervous about staining it. Like Oscar Wilde before me, I find it harder and harder every day to live up to my blue china.

My verdict: if you find yourself in the area, the temple of consumerism that is Glossier Soho is well worth a visit. Should you go out of your way to see it? I mean, it’s a store with a bunch of Glossier items and a cool selfie wall; if you’ve never been to another Glossier store, or if you want one of the location-specific merch items, then by all means. There were only a couple of other customers in the store when we were there, but it can clearly hold many more, so I wouldn’t be worried about visiting on a weekend…except maybe this particular one. Even as I type this sentence, devotees are lined up on Spring Street outside the store, waiting to trade in their empty foundation bottles for a new Stretch Foundation. And they say Glossier is in its flop era.