When it comes to modern beauty brands there is no one more influential than Glossier. Since its inception in 2014, it has transformed what it means to be interested in makeup, and with its charismatic founder, Emily Weiss, at its helm, the brand has felt truly unstoppable.
Despite guiding the beauty zeitgeist in Australia since its inception exactly one decade ago, the brand is only just now being released in stores around the country through MECCA. And to mark the occasion, RUSSH had the very special opportunity to sit down in person with the brand’s founder, who had embarked upon an inter-continental flight from her second home in Copenhagen to join the launch celebrations.
The sun was up, the winter Sydney air was crisp, and I made my way to a beautiful beach-side abode overlooking the Pacific to speak with Weiss. Amidst a flurry of journalists and employees from both MECCA and Glossier, Weiss’s space still had an air of calm to it. Glossier candles were lit. Tea cups were stacked at the ready next to a selection of sweet Madeleine cakes and chocolates. Music wafted softly through the open-air living space. And finally, Weiss herself appeared, as gracious and sophisticated as you’d expect.
It’s Weiss’s first visit to Australia, and despite only having touched down 36 hours ago with her two-year-old daughter in tow, she’s eager to lap up everything the city of Sydney has to offer.
“I’m excited to go to the zoo!” she says. “My daughter’s with me and she is extremely excited to see a koala bear and a kangaroo.”
It’s been a long wait for Australian beauty aficionados to get their hands on Glossier products IRL. But Weiss says that, despite the long timelines, Australia was always on the back of her mind.
“When we posted our first Instagram post about Glossier launching – we had 15,000 Instagram followers at the time – I think the most vocal community was Australia,” recalls Weiss. “I was literally like, “What?” I thought we were just going to have people in SoHo talking about wanting to come to our showroom, but we had people in Australia saying “Please start shipping here!”. So, we’ve been dying to come here for 10 years.”
As for why she thinks the brand resonated so much with women on the other side of the world? “It seems like, maybe, Australians have this style of life that is similar to this Glossier idea of ‘joy in the present moment’. It’s an attitude of ‘Hey, it’s no big deal!’; a lack of pretentiousness.”
Glossier has always played the long game when it comes to product development and distribution – never ones to do things by halves. For the brand, it’s about a slow and steady rise, a meticulous attention to the details, and the pursuit of centenarian longevity in an industry that sees so many brands come and go.
“When we launched, I was a Millennial – I guess I still am a Millennial? But, an ageing one?,” Weiss laughs. “I guess that’s why people maybe thought it was just a Millennial brand? But actually the intention has always been for Glossier to be a multi-generational brand. It’s truly about a certain kind of perspective that I think applies to everyone – from a 13-year-old to an 80-year-old. And it’s this idea that you look good, wherever you are in your life.”
It’s a sentiment that’s certainly resonated, and a reason why Weiss disclaims their “small product offering” compared to other 10-year-old beauty brands.
“It’s very tightly edited, for the very reason that we expect people to fall so in love with, say, Boy Brow, that they’re first picking it up when they’re 27, but now they’re 40 and they’re still using it.”
But even if Glossier has remained steadfast in its vision of beauty over the last ten years, the industry around it has certainly evolved dramatically.
“It is amazing that this industry, which was once very monolithic and controlled by a handful of corporations, is now a completely open playing field where anyone can invent a new brand very quickly,” remarks Weiss. “It’s a much faster cycle, but as the beauty industry has revved up, we’ve really almost put our heads down even more to refine and polish this brand.”
As for other industry evolutions – like the raging popularity of ‘dupe culture’ – Weiss is relatively unphased.
“When the brand was younger, I think we were much more angry. I think as we’ve grown up, it’s more of – what’s that phrase? – 'Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery'. At least we’re doing something right that’s resonating with people. It makes sense that others – particularly when we weren’t available – were like, let’s make something similar!”
Weiss has remained fairly synonymous with her brand, despite stepping back in 2022 from the role of CEO to focus on family, and steering the brand from the role of founder and executive chairwoman. And while the brand has always remained personal to Weiss’s own beauty manifesto – “the clean girl aesthetic?” she questions with a laugh – the brand has, of course, taken on a life of its own.
When probed about how her own beauty ethos has evolved in the last decade, she responds: “I think the definition has stayed the same. I’ve never wanted to totally transform my look. I feel like that’s been my modus operandi since I was 14 years old and buying Bobbi Brown’s books.”
As for what’s in her current beauty bag rotation? She’s loving Boy Brow in ‘Clear’ – “I don’t know if [my eyebrows] are falling with age, but I’m like, ‘Stand up! Look alive!’” – the G Suit lipstick in ‘Curve’ and a ‘Trench’ Ultralip.
This notion of a casual, freeform approach to makeup went against the grain of a lot of what was popular in the early 2010s – a time when slick contouring, ‘full glam’ and filled-in brows were the beauty culture’s most defining trends. But Weiss says that being the antithesis was Glossier’s superpower.
“I think [at the time] beauty was so rigid, and also very prescriptive and sometimes a little fear-mongering,” she says. “So I think it was this idea of, like, ‘Hey, actually you know more than you think. This isn’t rocket science’”.
But despite Weiss’s success, she has the humility to admit the Glossier was not the first to approach beauty from this angle: “There’s been Bobbi Brown, there’s been Clinique, there’s other brands that were not full, high-coverage makeup brands. You know?”
“That being said, I think Glossier’s always been advocating for people to do whatever makes them feel good,” she continues. “You know, we’re not snobs about needing people to only wear makeup a certain way. We’re more about actually making sure you understand you have a choice. And I think empowering people to have choices is really important.”
From the outside looking in, Weiss’s story as a founder feels effortless. She didn’t go to business school – with a laugh, she says she was “100 percent a missionary”, taking it upon herself to learn as she went along – but she did have a passion for beauty products that laid the foundations of her budding entrepreneurism.
“Man, I love beauty!” she says. “When I was 15 I remember Jeanine Lobell launching Stila. And, you know, the original lip glaze click pens, and the little drawings on the inside of all the packages – or Bonne Bell Lip Smackers!"
But knowledge does not always equate to success. And I’m intrigued to know whether Weiss knew resoundingly whether she was onto a bright idea with Glossier upon its inception. Did she always know it had the legs to be enormous?
“If I’m being really honest, I feel like I knew it when I had the idea,” she says. “I don’t think it took getting to a certain date of launch or a certain number of orders. I remember on launch day, we had 938 orders online,” she reminisces. “It felt like it was just the beginning – and then it was just about ruthlessly following through on making it happen.”
But despite the effortlessness with which it seemed to fall together, Weiss determinedly refutes the idea that it was easy.
“It is so hard. Everything was built by hand with a team of people for 10 years – and two years before that. It has just been this incredible life’s work,” she emphasises.
“And not just my life’s work, but I mean all the people who have come through our doors and touched it and built different pieces of it. Melanie [Masarin] who built our original retail who’s now founded Ghia, the non-alcoholic beverage company that’s really amazing. Or Diarrha [N'Diaye] who went on to found Ami Colé, her beauty brand, who was in product development. There were so many people at Glossier along the way who were like, birthing this thing, and figuring shit out.”
Aside from the all-female executive suite at Glossier, I’m interested to know what’s inspiring her now.
“I’m drawn to Claire Tabouret, who’s a French artist. There’s another amazing painter actually, who I’m so excited about, called Danielle Mckinney. Architecture, art… anything that’s sort of like an immersive experience,” she says.
Otherwise, Weiss credits motherhood as her biggest driving force these days. “I mean, it has certainly reinforced my belief in our mission and what we are doing, being a Mum to a daughter,” she says. “I hope that she forever will feel as delighted by beauty, and as delighted in herself as she is now.”
“All of these things we enjoyed when we were kids and teenagers, and then suddenly, when we grow up, now we have to get super serious, and like, rigid about ourselves?”
For Weiss, Glossier has been a way to inject fun back into daily beauty rituals; an encouragement to pause and enjoy where we are at, not only where we are going. “We’re missing the moment!” she exclaims.
