From Rare Beauty’s Plush, Pink Digs to The Outset’s Modern-rustic Headquarters: Inside 4 of Beauty’s Most Beautiful Offices
From Rare Beauty’s plush, pink headquarters to Glossier’s SoHo, New York outpost — here, a glimpse into four of beauty’s most beautiful offices and the design ethos’ that informed them.
1. Violette_FR
Dumbo, Brooklyn, New York
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A picture may be worth a thousand words, but a single shelf situated in Violette Serrat’s office relays entire histories.
That’s a somewhat literal assertion — the makeup artist-turned founder of her eponymous beauty line has a penchant for all things vintage, and it shows — but it’s also true in a figurative sense; the trinkets, mood boards and even the Parisian-style moldings that furnish the office serve a very specific purpose — to ineffably depict the artistic and cultural heritage of Violette_FR.
“I don’t think I’m always the best communicator, but this brand is so clear for me in my head,” says Serrat. “Having my world around me so that I can point things out, so things are in my face constantly in a concrete way — it’s like instant access to my creativity.”
Between the seemingly countless jars of dry powder pigments sourced over the years from various Japanese flea markets (“when I started doing makeup I would carry around my pigments in kits because makeup products were too expensive,” Serrat says), to the 20-plus paintbrushes stationed on Serrat’s desk, the space reads almost as much like an artist’s workshop as it does an office space.
“I see this brand as a modern maison, and to build a maison you need to have a ‘maison’ — a real house,” says Serrat, who curates “cabinets of curiosities” — or small, glass-encased displays featuring the historical references, color swatches and imagery that have inspired Violette_FR products, on view near the office entryway.
A literal cabinet in Serrat’s personal office, meanwhile, hosts other items of significance — the kaleidoscope she found at a flea market that inspired the secondary packaging of Boum Boum Milk, vintage beauty packaging by French heritage brands, flower guidebooks and so on.
“A customer sent me this color guide which I’m looking into at the moment, because I’m very interested in the symbolism of colors,” says Serrat, whose signature pinky-peach walls are the fruit of a carefully DIY-ed Pantone paint blend and several Home Depot runs.
“Everything with me is so specific, sometimes I’m like, ‘can’t you want something that’s already done?'” laughs Serrat. “But in a way it’s good — it’s easy for me to know what I want.”
Where the water cooler convo is at: “Weirdly, the conference room — because we’ll all be in there and within 15 minutes we’re laughing and having a conversation about something uninteresting — divertir — it entertains you.”
2. The Outset
SoHo, New York City, New York
For the average chronically online beauty lover, a step into Scarlett Johansson’s The Outset office immediately evokes a familiar scene. “It’s sort of our showroom area,” says brand manager Lorelei Orfeo of the modern-rustic-style open space, colloquially referred to as the “living room” by the brand’s team.
The room’s cognac tan leather couch, in particular, has “become kind of famous,” Orfeo continues. “It’s where a lot of our content happens, where we do a lot of our TikTok livestreams.” Indeed, many of TikTok’s favorite influencers — including “Get Ready With Me” heavy hitter Katie Fang and breakout podcaster Bobbi Althoff — have starred in social content on said couch alongside Johansson and The Outset cofounder and chief executive officer Kate Foster Lengyel.
A few feet away, samples of the brand’s Purifying Clay Mask, Barrier Rescue Balm and makeup-priming Prep Serum are stacked along a bookshelf atop heaps of coffee-table books — among them a volume of Yaffa Assouline’s “Avant-Garde Orientalists” and a 700-plus-page copy of Milady’s aesthetics guidebook. “Kate is obsessed with this book — she’s always pulling it out for inspiration,” Orfeo explains of the latter.
Meanwhile, a life-size cardboard cutout of Johansson — whose time of late is mostly spent filming Greg Berlanti’s upcoming “Fly Me to the Moon” — overlooks the showroom. “It was from an appearance on ‘Good Morning America,’ and so while she’s been gone we’ve been like, ‘OK — we need our Scarlett.'”
Other touches, such as a slew of past campaign imagery sprawled across the walls and Johansson’s dining table that’s now the centerpiece of the conference room, ensure that even when the cofounder isn’t physically present, she’s at the office in spirit — and, in the case of her cardboard cutout, head-to-toe Prada.
A typical team coffee/food run looks like: “Devoción, which is right around the corner, is our most popular spot — Ole & Steen is our other coffee go-to, and Sweetgreen is a couple of blocks away for lunch.”
3. Rare Beauty
El Segundo, Calif.
“It’s pretty incredible what a coat of paint will do to a building,” demurs Rare Beauty’s chief product officer Joyce Kim. Having joined the brand in 2019 — before its 2020 debut at Sephora — Kim remembers the (now seemingly unthinkable) pre-launch-era bare walls of Rare’s El Segundo, Calif., headquarters. “We hadn’t finalized any of the brand’s shades, colors, or creative cues — it was kind of just this shell of an office,” she recalls.
Come 2023, the Selena Gomez-founded brand had not only long since established the pink and plum hues that define its visual presence, but also its mission of fostering inner-outer well-being — two of the chief principles that informed the redesign of its headquarters that fall.
The revamp, executed by interior design firm Havenly, came in tandem with the development of Rare’s aromatherapy-infused Find Comfort body care collection. “Developing the line was basically parallel to creating the vibe, atmosphere and environment of the office,” Kim says.
Hardly a stone has been left unturned in pursuit of curating that warm office feel — from a strategically placed assortment of lounge-worthy couches to touches of ambient lighting throughout, to the implementation of “Mental Health Thursdays,” which entail office-wide activities such as yoga, breath-work sessions and group walks. “We’ll take over the front entrance of the lobby or the kitchen and move all the furniture out so we can have space to do these activities,” Kim says.
The space’s pièce de résistance? Custom Sherwin Williams paint shades adorning each step of the lobby’s staircase, mirroring the shades that comprise Rare’s hero Soft Pinch Liquid Blush collection.
Where the water cooler convo is at: “The kitchen — it’s just become this place where so much content creation happens. Tony, our head of IT, has been featured on our TikTok a lot because he’s kind of the epitome of someone who doesn’t know a ton about beauty, so when the entire team is in the kitchen and he’s in there eating lunch, we’ll just interview him like, ‘what are your favorite Rare Beauty products?'”
4. Glossier
SoHo, New York City, N.Y.
Architect Rafael de Cárdenas was the creative force behind Glossier’s SoHo, New York, headquarters, a space that brings the brand’s signatures — and lore — to life in the form of pink-upholstered sofas, subtle red accents and a relaxed-minimalist design that seeks to prioritize aesthetics and comfort.
“Rafael worked closely with Emily [Weiss, founder of Glossier] to make sure the space felt right for us,” says Kendall Latham, director of retail and experiential design at Glossier. “We wanted it to feel cozy — despite being an office for 150 people.”
Case in point: the office’s natural light-filled “lounge” serves as a multifunctional space where team members can grab a meal, host informal meetings or, thanks to a mini-stage situated at the front, attend speaker sessions by the likes of Deepak Chopra, Bobbi Brown and others.
Glossier’s many eras are well documented throughout the space — an archive near the entryway displays prototypes of now-signature offerings such as the brand’s pink bubble wrap pouches and clay molds of the Glossier You perfume bottle; elsewhere, framed portraits of Troye Sivan’s 2019 campaign for Glossier Play, the brand’s now-shuttered line of dialed-up makeup offerings, glimmer (literally) along a wall.
Conference rooms are named after accomplished women — Beyoncé, Cher, Michelle Obama and the like — while smaller, numbered phone booths serve a secondary purpose as blind product-testing rooms. “It’ll be like, OK — rate door number one compared to doors number two and three — we kind of use it as a fun experiment hall,” Latham says.
One wall in the office’s primary workspace is dedicated to showcasing Glossier fan mail — a surprising amount of which comes in the form of wedding and Bat Mitzvah invitations.
“This company — we just get invites,” says Roya Shariat, Glossier’s director of social impact and communications, gesturing toward a save the date sent by a bride-to-be asserting she will, in fact, be wearing Cloud Paint and Stretch Concealer on her big day.
Where the water cooler convo is at: “The coat closet. Or the bathroom — you can get ready in there before work or after, and the lighting is just the best — it automatically makes you hot, I can’t explain it,” Shariat laughs.
Launch Gallery: Beauty's Most Beautiful Offices From Rare Beauty to Glossier [PHOTOS]
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