On a balmy July evening, stylish beauty editors and influencers stepped out of their Ubers in their best outfits and asked friends and colleagues to film them entering the new Chanel Beauté store on North 6th Street in Williamsburg, the hipster haven-turned somewhat luxe neighborhood situated in north Brooklyn. Inside, they chatted loudly as servers handed out glasses of Champagne in between bottles of Chanel No 5 displayed in gold bird cages, walls of fragrances and blown-up images of Chanel ambassador Timothée Chalamet.
A week later, bougie fragrance brand Byredo — of which Puig recently acquired a majority stake — hosted a similar soiree to toast the opening of its new store, which happens to be next door to Chanel’s outpost.
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“Brooklyn, over the last decade, has become a global brand,” said New York real estate expert Jonathan Miller, president and chief executive officer of appraisal firm Miller Samuel. “It makes sense for any kind of global brand to be associated with that location.”
While the gentrification of neighborhoods like Williamsburg and Dumbo started 15 or so years ago, the pandemic drove even more people out of Manhattan and into Brooklyn in search of additional space, accelerating the trend of luxe retailers, beauty brands and services, and fitness and wellness studios, many of whom were at one time very Manhattan-centric.
“It’s following the shopper, as we say,” noted Wendy Liebmann, a retail analyst and chief executive officer of WSL Strategic Retail.
Brandon Singer, chief executive officer and founder of commercial real estate brokerage Mona, chalked the trend up to a couple of standout factors. “For the past 15 years [Brooklyn] has become slowly but surely cool; Williamsburg is where all the hipsters were, and the New Jersey Nets moved to Brooklyn. Different parts of Brooklyn have been developing over the past 10 to 15 years pretty quickly,” he said. Today, the population of Brooklyn is estimated at 2.7 million people.
Singer added that once COVID-19 ushered in the work-from-home era, it became “pretty logical that the first place outside of Manhattan someone can go to, which has any sort of remote sense of an urban type of environment — is Brooklyn.”
This kind of migration isn’t exactly new.
“You see this over and over again in different neighborhoods in New York City,” said Singer. “The restaurants go there because, frankly, the rent is cheaper, and then the people come; it becomes cool, then the retailers come.”
And boy have they come.
In Williamsburg, Chanel Beauty and Byredo’s predecessors include Credo Beauty, Glossier, Glowbar, Sephora, Alo, Skin Laundry, Aesop, Every/Body and Solidcore — to name just a few. Soon, the area will welcome a New York Pilates studio and acupuncture center, Wthn.
“[Williamsburg] has probably been one of our top requested locations the past several years,” said Brion Isaacs, New York Pilates co-owner and creative director.
Michelle Larivee, Wthn cofounder and CEO, added: “With the pandemic, a lot more people are working from home in Brooklyn, which makes it an attractive market in terms of people being there for hours a day and then we’ve also seen offices start to pop up in Brooklyn as well so just having that kind of live/work/play atmosphere.”
Demand appears to be strong across the board, with Kyle Leahy, the CEO of Glossier, telling Beauty Inc there was a six hour-long line on opening day back in November.
“It’s been a wonderful store for us,” she said. “The community was ready for us and excited to welcome Glossier to Brooklyn. For us, it’s a wonderful interplay between Brooklyn in Williamsburg and our SoHo flagship, where we think of Williamsburg as very much a neighborhood store — smaller format and has that kind of neighborhood bodega feel.”
Andria Soule, director of studios of the Northeast at Solidcore, which has locations in Williamsburg and Dumbo, said that its Williamsburg studio is its most profitable. “Our Williamsburg studio is so busy; it’s truly bursting at the seams,” she said, adding that neither Williamsburg nor Dumbo were among Solidcore’s top performing studios before the pandemic. “Now both of them are two of our highest-volume studios, because people just either stayed and lived in Brooklyn or they stopped commuting and they’re able to work from home.”
Gregg Throgmartin, CEO of laser facial chain Skin Laundry, which has a location in Williamsburg, sees Brooklyn as a vital part of building a national footprint.
“If you look at Brooklyn, I think if it was its own city, it would be the fifth largest in the United States, so if you’re building a national brand, the sheer population that’s there is quite large,” he said. “The reason that we put that higher on our list than a lot of other cities that have good demographics is Brooklyn has a very trendy customer base. And then that just kind of perpetuates itself, right?”
Brothers Ash and Aiden Kim even decided to set up their cosmetics brand Meloway in the neighborhood during a 2018 meeting at a Williamsburg coffee shop.
While it is an FDA requirement that brands put their address on the packaging, the duo decided to make their Brooklyn address front and center, especially in the case of their lipstick and mascara. (As opposed to having it listed in small print on a sticker at the bottom of the product.)
“We felt such love for the place and also Brooklyn is where our office is,” said Ash Kim. “So not only just putting that address on our carton, but wanting to put it on the main packaging as well because Brooklyn is such an identity for the brand.”
But it’s not just Williamsburg. More family-focused neighborhoods like Brooklyn Heights, Cobble Hill and Park Slope, too, have seen an influx of beauty brands, services and studios. These areas also happen to be home to myriad celebrities including Daniel Craig and Rachel Weisz, John Krasinski and Emily Blunt, Michelle Williams, Matt Damon, Maggie Gyllenhaal and Peter Sarsgaard, Jemima Kirke, Paul Rudd, Amy Schumer and Norah Jones.
Silver Mirror, the fast-facial bar, for one, is opening a location in Downtown Brooklyn, on the border of Brooklyn Heights, in the fall. While it’s the fifth location in New York City, it will be the brand’s first in Brooklyn.
“All those trains are right there. People who live and work have to come through that area and it just fits in with who our demo is,” said Matt Maroone, founder and co-CEO. “We also like that Brooklyn is like a decentralized borough/city. This was the meeting point of Brooklyn for us.”
Glowbar, another fast-facial spot which has been in Williamsburg for a while, just opened a new location in Cobble Hill and will debut another in Park Slope.
“Cobble Hill was a very easy supplement to our Williamsburg studio because they’re really different trade markets. The Williamsburg customer really doesn’t go for their daily needs to Cobble Hill and vice versa,” said Rachel Liverman, Glowbar CEO and founder.
Sephora has locations in Downtown Brooklyn and in Brooklyn’s Atlantic Terminal Mall, as well as a smaller shop in Williamsburg. Aesop is in Park Slope, Cobble Hill and Williamsburg. Benefit’s beloved brow bar, meanwhile, has been in Cobble Hill since around 2015.
But the OG of Cobble Hill beauty has to be Jessica Richards, who opened Shen Beauty on Court Street, a traditionally Italian neighborhood, back in 2010. Shen is known for its introduction of new brands into the market and is popular with the troves of celebrities who call that part of Brooklyn home.
“I realized that I was always going into the city for beauty so I decided to open a store with everything that I had bought while I was traveling and that we were all using,” she said. “At first, when we opened it was a real struggle. People didn’t know what it was. Brooklyn hadn’t been gentrified yet; that neighborhood 14 years ago is very different than it is now.”
That all changed when, around three years in, she persuaded Bobbi Brown to sell in the store, which also offers services such as brow shaping and facials.
“After that, we really started seeing an increase in sales and we became profitable quite quickly, and customers were more open at that time to testing a product they had never heard of or seen,” said Richards, whose secret sauce is to “focus on the story, the ingredients and the efficacy, and if it’s needed in our assortment. I also believe in launching newness and supporting new brands, whether or not they’ve been in another country for 20 years.”
While the neighborhood welcomed many new residents during the pandemic, Richards also noticed an exodus of residents to the suburbs. They still shop with her online, while the new residents tend to visit the brick-and-mortar location.
Beyond these newcomers, though, Brooklyn has a rich homegrown beauty scene, from the Russian bath houses in Brighton Beach to an abundance of textured hair and nail salons across Flatbush, Bed-Stuy and the downtown area.
The Laq Lab, for example, is a Black-owned nail salon near Barclays Center, home to the Brooklyn Nets, which opened its doors last summer and has already garnered notoriety for its signature chrome nails and distinctly pink interior.
“It’s a nice self care getaway,” said Tasama Craig, who cofounded the salon with Lawren Lee to service clients in the greater Brooklyn area, but has drawn regulars from Harlem, the Bronx and beyond. “Customers need something like this; they feel comfortable here.”
At The Laq Lab, visitors are greeted with their choice of either a water or a Bellini; they sit in plush pink and white chairs and cure their nail polish in baby-pink UV lamps.
On July 7 — the day after Beyoncé’s second performance at MetLife Stadium for her ongoing tour — the singer’s “Renaissance” album plays from start to finish at the salon. In between verses of “Church Girl” and Après Gel X prep, technicians and clients alike chatter about who among them saw Beyoncé.
One manicurist, who goes by P, didn’t secure tickets to either of her New Jersey shows, but is undeterred nevertheless — “it’s not over until it’s over,” she said.
By P’s calculations, she primped at least six nail sets that did make their way to the concerts so, basically, “I was there in spirit, you know?”
Other loved nail salons in the area include Bed-Stuy’s Element Beauty and Luna Nail lounges, while Ursula Stephen’s namesake hair salon and Xia Charles’ Braided have become cultural staples, servicing A-listers like Rihanna and Cardi B in addition to the local community.
When it comes to Brooklyn, though, the nail and hair spheres are just as much about independent technicians as they are about salons.
This has long been true, but became even more so following salon closures during the pandemic, which prompted some stylists to take their work into their own hands — and homes.
Annie Bunns is one such technician. Born and raised in Trinidad, Bunns came to Bed-Stuy more than a decade ago and has been taking nail appointments out of her home for the last few years.
“I have a lot of clients that come from Bed-Stuy, Crown Heights, Flatbush,” said Bunns, who will soon graduate to a salon suite in Flatbush. “My clients love the ghetto-fab look.”
Her design M.O. includes intricate linework, as many Swarovski crystals as possible, and, recently, duck-shaped nails, which taper out at the tips. Once ubiquitous in the early 2010s, the nail shape is seeing a resurgence in Brooklyn.
“For like the last 10 years, everybody was like, ‘no, duck nails are ugly, I can’t wear them,’ now I feel like Black girls, Latino women — all of the women that love nails have been coming in asking for them.”
Bunns charges between $70 to $140 for the average set, and estimates her clients have spent a cumulative $5,000 on duck-shaped nails this summer alone.
Press-on nails — which have grown in both popularity and intricacy in recent years — have proven a lucrative business for independent artists like Bunns and salons like Laq Lab.
And Bunns envisions the trend going a step further: Prestige retail.
“I would love to see Sephora selling press-ons. Start having them on the wall — you think we don’t want our nails done after we get our makeup done?” she said.
Braided alum Kerrisha Tichiana branched out during the pandemic to found Kerri Beauty Lab, accepting clients out of a salon suite in Williamsburg, while other prominent Brooklyn hair stylists like Kee’Ana Amari and Kyndal Baldwin have built client bases entirely through Instagram by posting their work.
But as the gentrification of Brooklyn continues, having a stand-alone shop in the borough without a big corporation behind it is no easy feat as both commercial and residential rents soar, risking more residents being priced out.
“There’s been lots of media coverage about people that have moved from Brooklyn to the Upper East Side to save money,” said Miller. “It’s a story that Brooklyn was seen as a cheaper place to live than Manhattan and now that story has been turned upside down and the result would be a proliferation of more luxury brands becoming aligned with Brooklyn.”
“We’re in a housing affordability crisis, but we’re also in a real estate affordability crisis,” said Dominique Jean-Louis, chief historian at the Center for Brooklyn History. “The overall astronomical rise of rents for people to live and also for businesses to thrive, it’s becoming increasingly difficult.”
The center has been collecting oral histories for years about the importance of local barbers, hair salons and beauty shops and their importance to the surrounding communities.
“When people talk about their upbringings here one of the most consistent themes are these places of community and they’re usually community-owned as well,” she said. “All of these places have been central to certainly a Brooklyn childhood and upbringing for generations, and so now that affordability is really reaching a crisis point. [These beauty spaces], they’re not just kind of nice to have. In many cases, they’re vital to have. It’s where a community encounters each other and without an affordable way to continue, what community means will change drastically based on what spaces it has to thrive and so this is going to be a major indicator for what community looks like for the next few generations at least.”