Ex-Glossier employees say the beauty brand failed Black workers

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August 18, 2020

Good morning, Broadsheet readers! Today is the 100th anniversary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment, Michelle Obama gives a rousing virtual address at the DNC, and former Glossier employees say they faced racism while working at the brand’s retail stores. Have a reflective Tuesday.

– Behind the Gloss. A few weeks ago, I got in touch with a group of Glossier retail employees. They wanted to talk about their experiences working for the $1.2 billion makeup brand founded by Emily Weiss, a job that included embodying the company’s mission to “democratize beauty” at the startup’s New York flagship destination.

The experiences these employees described were far from the idealistic vision of beauty industry equality reflected in Glossier’s marketing. In interviews, 18 workers—or “editors,” in the Glossier lingo—told me about regular microaggressions that they say were directed at Black editors and other employees of color by customers and managers, and described how their retail managers—and Glossier as a whole—repeatedly failed to address that behavior.

These employees—who became ex-employees on Aug. 7 when Glossier officially laid off all editors at its retail stores, which have been closed since March due to the pandemic—describe a range of disturbing behavior: a group of customers who, they say, applied blackface with dark shades of concealer without any action from managers; visitors who touched Black employees’ hair and skin and received apologies from managers if they complained after the employee asked them to stop; comments like a manager telling a Black employee interested in purchasing a designer handbag for resale that she “couldn’t afford it.” The slights were personal and constant, the former editors say.

Last Thursday night, this group of ex-employees posted an open letter under the name “Outta the Gloss”—a play on Weiss’s blog Into the Gloss—demanding change at Glossier. The company responded with a blog post describing new policies it plans to enact, followed by an apology posted to Instagram yesterday. Glossier also shared a statement with Fortune, though it declined to comment on the specific incidents described in my story. Included in that statement: “We are grateful to our former colleagues for coming forward to share their lived experiences, and want to apologize and publicly acknowledge the pain and discomfort they experienced.”

The group behind the letter organized following the June protests against racism and police brutality that rocked the nation—and Glossier’s commitment to donate $1 million in support of racial justice, including money earmarked for Black-owned beauty businesses. Several of these editors had individual meetings with Weiss throughout June and July, but, ultimately, they decided that Glossier’s response didn’t go far enough. (The situation has been complicated by the COVID-19 pandemic; with stores closed and the company’s retail workers laid off, many of the promised changes cannot yet be implemented.)

Some of the editors acknowledge that their accusations are similar to those faced by female-led brands like the Wing and Refinery29, whose leaders stepped down amid the scandals. But the former Glossier employees say their aim is not to “cancel” Glossier. As one former employee explained: “If you’re about to be in charge of helping other Black businesses, you need to fix your own house first.”

Read my full story here.

Emma Hinchliffe
emma.hinchliffe@fortune.com
@_emmahinchliffe

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