“ ‘I’m Generation G,’ ” creative direc-
tor Marie Suter answers, sipping a ginger
ale with a paper straw. Weiss nods.
Weiss has on a loose oral dress and
Birkenstock look-alikes. Her low-key
ethos could be mistaken for that of a
hoodie-sporting tech bro, but a close
observer will notice that those sandals
are Chanel. Despite heading a beauty
company, Weiss, 34, appears practically
barefaced—in early hashtag parlance, she
#WokeUpLikeThis. That’s the prevailing
Glossier aesthetic, one admittedly best
suited to the age group that needs no
cosmetic help at all. But making things
look convincingly eortless, in business
or in makeup, is a special feat. Weiss’s
brushed-up arches are no doubt held
in place by the cult pomade Boy Brow.
(The $16 product debuted in 2016 with
a 10,000-person wait list.) Her skin’s
fresh-from-the-sauna glow suggests a
cocktail of the vitamin-boosted Super
Pack Serums, a trio priced at the relative
bargain of $65. And her cheeks—dabbed
with rosy Cloud Paint, perhaps—tele-
graph the kind of ush that follows a light
jog. Or a $1.2 billion valuation.
That is what has catapulted Glossier
(pronounced like “dossier”) into the
pantheon of unicorns, the tech-speak
term for start-ups worth a cool 10 gures.
(Never mind that it’s also an apt descrip-
tion for pastel packaging bedecked
with the occasional hologram.) In the
$500 billion global beauty industry—
one that’s anecdotally recession-proof as
the economy seems to teeter—Glossier
is hardly the only power player, with
a name that still goes unrecognized in
more analog corners of the country. It
might be tempting to align Weiss with
the pioneers of yore (Estée Lauder,
Mary Kay Ash) or the boldface bosses of
today (Fenty’s Rihanna, Kylie Jenner).
But Weiss ts best among a cohort of
millennial founders—including Audrey
Gelman of the women’s co-working
space and social club The Wing and
Outdoor Voices’ Ty Haney—whose real-
world savvy and third-wave-feminist
bent grant them a gods-among-women
stature. The message is understood:
With the right work ethic and brow
grooming, you can have it all.
In some sense, Glossier devotees can
have it all, with a slogan that reads like
a breezy to-do list (“Skin First, Makeup
Second, Smile Always”) and pricing that
falls between drugstore and concept
shop. The brand doesn’t need sticker
shock to make a status object. One of
its early signatures—the pink bubble
mailer—elevated ho-hum shipping sup-
plies to marketing genius. (You can spot
them repurposed as toiletry cases in air-
port X-ray bins; Glossier even gave the
name Bubblewrap to its recent eye-and-
lip formula, with a matching pink cap.)
This kind of in-crowd sensibility brought
in a million new customers last year, to
the tune of $100 million–plus in revenue.As the nancial market has taken notice,
so have the next-level fans. In July,
Michelle Obama showed up at Essence
Festival in New Orleans, her lips glisten-
ing in a soon-to-launch shade of Glossier
Lip Gloss; later that week, some members
of the U.S. women’s soccer team stopped
by the Manhattan agship the day before
their ticker-tape parade. It’s only a matter
of time before Ruth Bader Ginsburg hits
the bench with a slick of Haloscope shim-
mering across her cheekbones.138 VANITY FAIR NOVEMBER 2019