Beauty-obsessed millennials may recall that seven years ago, Glossier upended their original "skin first, makeup second" playbook with the launch of the Glossier You fragrance. It was a runaway success, with warm, and largely inoffensive, “skin-enhancing” notes of ambrox and an amberette musky base. Now, the scent is the No. 1 selling fragrance at Sephora, with a millennial pink bottle selling every 17 seconds, per Glossier CEO Kyle Leahy. Just a few days shy of the brand's ten year anniversary, Glossier is introducing two new iterations of the original You formula: Glossier You Doux and Glossier You Rêve.
To celebrate the new launches, which founder Emily Weiss reveals have been in the works essentially since the first fragrance debuted, Glossier hosted a somewhat cryptic fête for press and tastemakers in Long Island City, Queens (invitations did not specify where the ferry boat ride would take the prospective revelers). The industrial space, clad in dramatic wall-to-wall red velvet, allowed Weiss to unveil the two new fragrances with the type of intrigue and mystique that was once central to the brand's product line. Fittingly, as the founder began to speak, cocktail servers weaved through the crowd with trays of champagne. I snagged a glass as a hush fell over the room, all of us eager to learn what the brand had been teasing on social media for weeks.
"When I think of quiet luxury, that’s Glossier Doux,” says Weiss of the woody blend, with notes of sweet iris, earthy palo santo, frankincense, and myrrh. “It’s the Tôteme, the Row, the Khaite girl." Imagine your softest cashmere sweater distilled down into a perfume, with a hint of smokey firewood from your backyard firepit in Monterey. As for Doux's sister scent, Rêve, the founder classifies it as a sexy, sweet, petty, rich, nighttime moment. "A gourmand but don't call it a gourmand," Weiss says. It's the more sensual scent you reach for when you're going out for the night—and maybe not return until sunrise. "[It's] kind of this heady, almost bacchanalian night out," she adds of the buttercream, plum butter, toasted almond, iris, and sandalwood mix. Suddenly, the trays of champagne were replaced with platters of the new You bottles, and we all clamored to spritz and sniff together before they launch on Glossier and in retail stores on October 3.
Legendary perfumer Frank Voelkl, who created the original Glossier scent with perfumer Dora Baghriche, is also behind the new perfume duo, which still utilize the same musky base for which You is so well known. The goal, according to Weiss and Leahy, is to offer more of a "fragrance wardrobe" for Glossier fans, with a new You for every mood. And since the team titillated party-goers with the promise of even more Glossier perfumes, it seems that the You-niverse (sorry) will continue to expand for the foreseeable future.