My new job starts in ten days (!!), so I’m trying to dig myself out of my end-of-summer ennui and tie up loose ends, one of which is the second half of my Glossier reflections (part 1 here). This post will be an account of my first and second visits to Glossier D.C., which took place on two Thursday afternoons in July. Knowing that Glossier had begun the process of closing all but three of its standalone stores, I wanted to check out the Georgetown store before it was too late and, if possible, get a better estimate of its closing date than “in the next two and a half years.”

Georgetown is one of the city’s oldest and wealthiest neighborhoods, known for picturesque brick rowhouses, expensive shopping, and, of course, Georgetown University. There’s also an excellent used bookstore called The Lantern, owned by Bryn Mawr College (Seven Sisters solidarity!):

And, yes, Georgetown Cupcake (the “double milk chocolate birthday” flavor is my favorite):

Georgetown’s main artery is M St., which runs parallel-ish to the Potomac River and functions as the city’s primary bougie retail corridor. Almost every time I’ve visited, starting in March of this year, it has been absolutely fucking slammed. Weekday or weekend, during the semester or over summer vacation, there always seem to be crowds overflowing the narrow sidewalks. So it makes sense that Glossier would want to open its D.C. store here, just as it opened its London store in Covent Garden, its Brooklyn store in Williamsburg, and its Philadelphia store in Rittenhouse. But the more upscale and crowded the neighborhood, the higher the rents, and Glossier put itself under tremendous financial pressure by opening stores in a dozen of the fanciest and busiest neighborhoods in the world in the space of just two years. The stores needed to succeed more or less immediately, and it’s clear that most of them didn’t.

Plus, I’m pretty sure that each of those neighborhoods has at least one Sephora, where Glossier has been sold for three and a half years. The Sephora deal was announced in 2022, the same year that Glossier opened most of its new stores. I’m far from a business or marketing expert, but I can’t help thinking it was a bad idea for those two things to happen at exactly the same time, considering that Sephora would compete directly with the Glossier stores. In 2022, Glossier was in an awkward liminal position: it was bigger than the indie brands that had been undone by Sephora deals (anyone remember OCC?), but much smaller than the conglomerate-owned beauty brands (e.g. MAC, NARS, Benefit) that successfully operated their own storefronts and were available at Sephora and/or Ulta. In other words, Glossier was taking two risks in one, and those risks don’t seem to have paid off as handsomely as expected.

For now, though, Glossier still resides on M St., occupying the lower half of a four-story building between a Rag & Bone store and, uh, another Rag & Bone store:

There’s no obvious sign out front, but the windows get the job done:

On the ground floor is a long vestibule where, on my first visit, a greeter was stationed. On my second visit, there was a table with charms that customers who spent over $40 could use to decorate their Balm Dotcom tubes, but no employee to dispense said charms:

A less scrupulous shopper could easily have made off with a handful of charms. Lucky for Glossier, I still have some scruples left, despite nearly four decades of existence on this benighted earth.

On the left side of the first-floor vestibule is the window where you pick up the purchases you make in the store. (Yes, Glossier stores still make you order from a sales associate [sorry, “offline editor”], then wait for your products to be bagged and sent to the window.) At the rear is a steep staircase leading to the second floor. A sign in tiny lettering invites customers to find an editor for elevator access, but for a large part of my second visit, all of the editors were on the second floor! Were people supposed to shout up the staircase for help? Not the most disability-friendly arrangement.

The D.C. store has an airport concept that made me, a nervous flier, feel like an arachnophobe in a Spirit Halloween. At the top of the staircase is an old-fashioned clicky schedule sign that cycles through various Glossier-related phrases such as PINK SKIES AHEAD and WELCOME TO TERMINAL G. It’s a cute touch…

…though, alas, the one close-up photo I took of the sign captured the message P%YM4L LRJ?KSORG JN8?T37V.

Next to the sign is another window labeled “order pickup.” I’m not actually sure what the purpose of this window is, except to give you a glimpse of the cool metal contraption that ferries bags down to the window on the first floor. (The white sign on the counter instructs customers to “head downstairs to the lobby to receive your order.”)

In general, I feel that Glossier hasn’t made the best possible use of the space in this grand old building. The second floor is divided into two rooms, and the room closest to the stairs contains little more than the non-functional pickup window, the clicky sign, and a long bench in front of an enormous photo of a pair of lips. The eerie emptiness of this half of the floor does in fact evoke certain airports I’ve passed through (looking at you, Denver), so points for verisimilitude, I guess!

There’s also an easy-to-miss alcove (I totally missed it on my first visit) with the obligatory selfie mirror, this one in the shape of an airplane window:

The second room contains Glossier’s full array of products. If the light looks very dim in this photo, it’s because a thunderstorm was about to hit.

I tried not to capture my fellow shoppers or the sales associates in my photos, but I saw probably six to eight other customers during each of my visits. The clientele skewed heavily toward teenage and college-aged girls, and on my first visit, I was easily the second-oldest person in the store (the oldest being the fifty-something mom of one of the teenage girls). So much for the doomer narrative that Glossier is failing to draw in the younger set; the real question for me is whether the brand can continue to appeal to people old enough to purchase alcohol legally. More on that later.

During my second visit, Glossier was promoting its new NYC-themed collection. It was a little strange to see the D.C. store given over to merchandise for an entirely different city; I can only imagine how that went over in Philly.

I looked for the luggage tag that used to be available at the Georgetown store but couldn’t find it anywhere, so maybe Glossier stopped doing the city-specific merch? I’m glad I bought the Philly mug while it was still available.

I swatched the newish (released two years ago) lip liners and was impressed by their tenacity—they stayed on even when I scrubbed my hands at the sink that Glossier thoughtfully places in every store. I’ve been looking for a burgundy lip liner, and I was tempted by Black Cherry (the two bottom swatches), but $20 for a lip liner just seems exorbitant to me.

Another product that caught my attention was Full Orbit, an undereye cream that “depuffs, visibly smooths fine lines and brightens the look of dark circles” (a sop thrown to aging millennials, perhaps?).

Foundations, lip glosses, powder blushes:

Both times, I left empty-handed, wondering how Glossier could win me back as a paying customer. More shades of Cloud Paint and Lidstar, my two favorite color makeup formulas from the brand? A replacement for the discontinued Monochrome palettes? A price cut on Boy Brow and Lash Slick? Any of those would probably pique my interest. But the most successful beauty brands offer customers what they didn’t even know they wanted, and it’s been a while since Glossier has done that for me.

Does that mean Glossier has heartlessly abandoned its millennial customer base? Actually, I think it’s more likely that millennials have abandoned Glossier. Let’s face it, Glossier has always been a starter skincare and makeup brand, offering an unintimidating (though also somehow exclusive-seeming) approach to color, texture, and fragrance. Most women start their skincare and makeup journeys in their teens and twenties, and Glossier’s first years overlapped with the teens and/or twenties of the majority of millennials. Well, Glossier has maintained its beginner-friendly identity, and we’re no longer beginners: it’s as simple as that. Instead of agonizing over Glossier’s supposed pivot to courting Gen Z or Gen Alpha, maybe we should celebrate the maturation of our skills and tastes? Or maybe we should, I don’t know, stop identifying ourselves with brands at all?

By the way, I did ask an employee when the store was closing. She said she didn’t know for sure but thought it would stay open through the end of the year, when the lease is up. So if you’d like to treat your fear of flying with cotton-candy-hued, ambrox-scented exposure therapy, you have at least three and a half months in which to do so! And while you’re in Georgetown, get a labneh soft serve with olive oil, pomegranate molasses, and sea salt at Yellow. It’s absolutely delicious.

This will probably be my last post before classes start in September, and I doubt I’ll become more prolific while teaching, so…see you when I see you, I guess. And let me know your thoughts on the current state of Glossier in the comments, if you’d like!