God does not exist in Olive Young’s flagship Seongsu location in Seoul. Inside the five-story, 4,628 sq meters temple to Korean beauty, chaos reigns. The first floor has been converted into a beach-themed installation for the season, complete with “wellness” smoothie and gelato bars, and bewilderingly, in the center of the room, a man sitting atop a giant lifeguard chair, booming greetings to shoppers through a megaphone. On the upper levels, I am greeted by a wall of face masks, a beauty station with mirrors and sinks and a health grocery store. Every floor is overrun by hordes of skincare-obsessed tourists like me, stuffing our bags with everything we can’t find back home. According to reports, a purchase is made every 0.9 seconds in the store.
If flying all the way to Seoul into the eye of the storm for some face masks sounds like overkill, I have good news for the skincare lover reading this. More and more Americans are getting access to Korea’s largest health and beauty retailer, which opened its first US store in Pasadena earlier this year with a line that stretched a quarter-mile long. Last month, it made a buzzy debut in Sephora, where shoppers can buy 19 curated Korean brands in hundreds of locations nationwide. It’s been a relief for K-beauty fans in the US who have been stuck with the frustrating reality that the best stuff isn’t FDA-approved for sale here, or they can only find marked-up or counterfeit options on Amazon.
