The Hoodie That Defined a Beauty Generation

In the blur of my teenage years, my armor was a pink hoodie. Plush, pillow-soft, and a perfectly approachable shade of pink, my Glossier hoodie was my sidekick as I reluctantly dissected frogs in AP Biology and walked the mile in gym class. When I opened my college decision letters, there I was, cocooned in its millennial-pink goodness, its warmth carrying me through each rejection.

I loved who I became when I wore my Glossier hoodie. Emblazoned with the Glossier logo in its signature sans serif font, it was unapologetically soft and just the right amount of oversized. More importantly, it made me feel—and look—good, as per the brand’s signature mantra. The pink Glossier hoodie was a portal into a world in which I felt seen, safe, and a little more myself. When I tied its drawstrings into a cute little ribbon, I wasn’t an insecure gay boy with cystic acne; I was a Glossier boy on the Glossier Instagram grid.

In 2025, a beauty brand launching merch isn’t particularly groundbreaking. But in 2019, when the Glossier hoodie launched, it wasn’t your run-of-the-mill branded tee that was destined for the donation pile. It was the first time that beauty was kind of cool. Beauty became something to identify with. I wanted nothing more than to be a part of the Glossier grid, to live the Glossier lifestyle in my Glossier hoodie while applying my Glossier products. The pink Glossier hoodie hard-launched beauty into the realm of cultural cool.

Glossier / Instagram / Byrdie

From the brand’s inception, I was meticulously enamored by Glossier’s bubble-wrapped fantasy of approachable aspiration. At the peak of my cystic acne in 2015, I stumbled upon the Glossier Instagram and found myself immediately pulled into its millennial pink orbit. Its grid was this seemingly casual curation of pastel accents and sans-serif affirmations and effortlessly dewy skin. It wasn’t long before its signature pink pouch became my pencil case, and  Boybrow became my saving grace. To be a Glossier boy is to be a cool boy, I remember thinking to myself.

So naturally, when it launched its pink GlossiWear hoodie in 2019, I had no choice but to dip into my stash of red-envelope money. And it wasn’t just me: The hoodie amassed a 10,000-person waiting list, and it swiftly became a cultural phenomenon sported by It girls and industry darlings alike. Case in point: In December of 2019, the Internet’s favorite soft boy, Timothée Chalamet, was spotted in the hoodie, pairing the pink fleece with a Prada puffer coat and Stella McCartney sunglasses. Practically overnight, the hoodie became a cool boy–approved badge of casual clout. As one X (formerly known as Twitter) user put it: “Whenever i wear my glossier hoodie i pretend it’s timothee chalamet’s glossier hoodie that he let me borrow like a gf/bf.” 

Fast-forward six years, and it seems like every beauty brand has a hoodie or at least some sort of logo-heavy swag. But few can replicate the magic of the pink Glossier hoodie, which cemented Glossier not just as a beauty brand but as a bona-fide lifestyle brand. The merch is just the starting point. The real play is weaving the brand into cultural conversations where beauty becomes a marker of identity. 

We’ve come a long way from the Glossier hoodie. After Starface launched in 2019, its star-shaped pimple patches emerged as an “if you know, you know” status symbol, making appearances quite literally everywhere. Be it Justin Bieber’s paparazzi shots or Charli D’Amelio’s TikTok dances, Starface patches embedded themselves into mainstream culture (see this meme, which was sent to me six times by six different people).

Glossier / Instagram / Byrdie

When Rhode launched its Lip Case in 2024, beyond featuring in countless mirror selfies from brand founder Hailey Bieber, it also became somewhat of a virtue signal (the virtues being no-makeup makeup, dewy skin, matcha lattes, and glazed donut nails). If you have the Rhode Lip Case with the Peptide Lip Tint in the shade Ribbon, chances are that you go to reformer Pilates every day and get a lavender matcha latte with oat milk after class. 

Now more than ever, what beauty products one uses are a symbol of taste, tribe, and status. My Instagram Explore page is an influx of memes that relate beauty to books and interiors and coffee orders and political beliefs and, in a broader sense, vibes. In large part thanks to the Glossier hoodies of the world, beauty has become a shorthand for identity; we are, in essence, what we put on our faces.