It seems that brands like Glossier are favoured by Gen Zs for having a "cooler" image. Photo: Instagram/Glossier
Imagine a ball pit – but one crowded with teens and 20-somethings instead of small children, and filled with biodegradable confetti instead of plastic spheres.
That is one way to describe the recent scene at a pop-up shop that Glossier, the US beauty brand, opened in Paris to promote the release of its latest fragrance, Fleur.
In an area surrounded by purple mesh screens, visitors could plod through the purple confetti toward a tall pile of it, atop which sat a bottle of the new perfume.
When a person grabbed the bottle from its perch, the action set off a process that resulted in a personalised poem – composed by artificial intelligence – appearing on a nearby screen.
“You hold fleur with grace; beneath lavender light; your gaze tranquil elegance,” read a poem spat out for a friend of Jeanne Melman’s.
At 17, Melman, a high school student in Paris, is part of a cohort that Glossier has made deep inroads with since it was started 11 years ago: Gen Z, or Generation Zede as it is called in France.
Melman went to the pop-up with two friends, both also 17. All three of them said Glossier products were among the US exports that they most highly prized.
Melman recalled the time she tried a Krispy Kreme doughnut after the chain arrived in France in 2023.
“Good but not exceptional,” she said.
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While visiting a pen pal in Cincinnati last summer, Melman added, she became acquainted with pickleball, which she “kind of liked”.
Glossier, known for skin care and makeup products that the brand says enhance a person’s natural beauty, has been tightening its grip on French customers since 2018, when it started shipping to France.
In a country that is home to many iconic makers of perfumes and cosmetics – L’Oreal, Lancome, Chanel – Glossier has managed to find an audience: France ranks fifth in terms of where it has the most engagement on social media, Kyle Leahy, the company’s CEO, said in an interview.
But that doesn’t necessarily translate to sales in France, partly because pop-ups are the only way for the brand's fans in the country to buy products in person; it does not have a physical retail presence there.
While waiting in a long line to enter the Fleur pop-up, Clementine Stahl, a 15-year-old student, gave a reason for Glossier’s allure to people her age: It has a “cooler” image, as she put it, compared with legacy French brands, which “think more classically”.
Typology, a six-year-old French cosmetics brand offering its own take on minimal products, was mentioned by others at the pop-up as having a similar appeal to Glossier.
Stahl was with her 17-year-old cousin, Agathe Bernardi.
Glossier was not the only young American beauty brand they liked. Both said they were also fans of Rhode, founded by Hailey Bieber, and Fenty Beauty, founded by Rihanna.
Stahl, as it happened, also said she believed that “ the best pop stars come from America”.
Dorothee Thiam, a 20-year-old student studying psychology at Paris Nanterre University, said at the pop-up that she and other Gen Zs, no matter where they came from, tended to generally gravitate toward brands that reflected their identities.
Thiam said the ways that Fenty Beauty and Glossier had engaged with Black consumers like herself, for example, played a “huge role” in drawing her to their products.
“Representation is so important,” she added. “It’s about being able to see yourself in the brands you consume, which makes a big difference.”
Marie Olivier, a 22-year-old master’s student, said brands that embraced individuality instead of prescribing fixed ideals embodied what she considered a distinctly American trend, one that she had come to appreciate.
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“What I like from the US is the whole self-development type trend,” said Olivier, who is studying political science at Paris-Saclay University.
“It encourages you, I think, to embrace your own lifestyle, your whole personality, and just to try to be the best version of yourself.”
Her sentiment evoked what Leahy said was the thinking behind the name Glossier: it is a portmanteau that took inspiration from dossier, the French word for folder, and Into the Gloss, the name of the website that laid the foundation for the cosmetics brand and that is known for featuring a diverse collection of beauty routines.
Glossier’s first fragrance, You, released in 2017, was marketed with the promise that its formula smelled slightly unique on everyone.
The brand might be beloved by Gen Zs, but Leahy said its reach bridged generations.
“We see mothers and daughters shopping together,” she said.
Or fathers shopping without daughters, as was the case with one man at the pop-up. He arrived alone but with clear instructions from his daughter: Take pictures and buy her the new Fleur perfume and some Cloud Paint blush. – ©2025 The New York Times Company
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
