New York Magazine

Over a decade since Glossier first launched, the beauty landscape looks very different. There are hundreds of brow products from prestige brands and drugstores. And sure, a lot of brow gels existed when Boy Brow was at its peak, but the difference was that having that product made you feel like part of a moment that was bigger than makeup. At the time, Glossier was valued at $1.2 billion. By 2021, it was valued at $1.8 billion, and five years later, it’s currently valued under $1 billion — a significant decrease in the industry. When Glossier started in 2014, the business model was direct-to-consumer until it opened its first Soho flagship store four years later. Loyal customers and fans became brand advocates who spoke the same language, helped shape the launches, and fueled conversations on social media and across the industry. A former Glossier employee said she considers herself the “last of the listening class” — meaning they actually heard what their customers wanted and gave them whatever they could, within means. But things got “dark,” according to Hana Ford, a beauty publicist and longtime Glossier superfan, when the brand launched in Sephora stores in 2023 and started changing product formulas to cater to a different audience. Ford no longer feels the same connection to the brand today, but it will always hold sentimental value for her. Now she gets her beauty products from Rhode, Kosas, and Tower 28. “I feel like they’ve all taken cues from Glossier’s playbook,” she says. These companies, all with strong visual brand identities and emotionally invested fan bases, have each put their own spin on the blueprint. Read Asia Milia Ware’s report on how Glossier was the blueprint, but the brand doesn’t command the same cultural dominance anymore: https://lnkd.in/gTGaNcWc

Red Hook is calling your name. This month’s perk features two neighborhood favorites, both a short walk from the ferry dock. Stop by Steve’s Authentic Key Lime Pie for a complimentary four-inch tart, then head next door to Strong Rope Brewery for a free draft beer of your choice. Et voilà – a summer afternoon well spent. In case you missed it, we launched ‘New York’ Perks: a lineup of monthly treats exclusively for our subscribers. Learn how to redeem your perk this month here: https://lnkd.in/g7ebYJX2

Tom Holland, like Peter Parker in the new Spider-Man movie, has been dealing with some growing pains. ‘Spider-Man: Brand New Day’ starts off by speeding through what would have been Peter’s college years to pick up with him in his early 20s. He has also been going through a spider puberty of sorts, causing his wrists to sprout organic web slingers that render his old mechanical ones unusable and making him prone to fits of black-eyed aggression. This is his equivalent of a spider molting, shedding its old exoskeleton to hopefully emerge — stronger and more resilient — into adulthood. “But the movie has no idea what that adulthood might look like,” writes film critic Alison Willmore. Part of this is a Spider-Man problem — growing up has never entirely suited Peter Parker, who’s always felt most natural as some kind of student. But part of this is an issue with Holland, who’s risen to movie-star status on the strength of the Marvel character but who himself is teetering on the edge of a grown-up career that feels a lot less certain. When Jon Bernthal’s Punisher, with whom Spider-Man is inexplicably paired up for this installment, growls, “I’m gonna kill that kid,” it’s a reminder that Holland also just spent ‘The Odyssey’ playing a boy waiting to come of age while elsewhere in the same film actual children get enlisted into war. “Timothée Chalamet is the same age but plays characters whose core tension is their desire to be taken seriously as men despite their youthfulness,” writes Willmore. “Unlike him, Holland feels perched on the edge of the unknown — like the movies aren’t allowing him to grow up because they’re not sure what a grown-up Holland character entails.” Read Willmore on how, in the latest ‘Spider-Man’ film, Holland, like the superhero he’s playing, struggles to show us what might be next: https://lnkd.in/g6j7Uv7m

Lucie Franc de Ferriere says she grew up “surrounded by cake.” Her family’s chateau, just outside Bordeaux, France, was also a winery, tearoom, and bed-and-breakfast, all serving homemade desserts. But not until a few years after moving to the city in 2018, when she began working at her now-husband Gurpreet Singh’s restaurant, Sunday to Sunday, did she realize she had a future in cake-making. “People were coming back for my baked goods, and I was like, Oh, I’m not that bad,” she recalls. “I stole all my mother’s recipes from France, and we decided to open an actual bakery.” Now her East Village storefront, From Lucie, is known for its delicate seasonal flavors of cake piled high with flowers and herbs; recently, she published her first cookbook, Cake From Lucie. “My favorite moments are when I start piecing the flowers together,” she says. “That’s when I genuinely forget everything else and just sink into designing a cake with no plan for how it will look. It simply happens as it happens.” Read Franc de Ferriere’s heat-wave #GrubStreetDiet: https://lnkd.in/gFWRhA_k

Child marriage is a fringe practice, even within the most conservative religious and cultural communities, but it is also more common than many Americans realize. It remains legal in 33 states and in West Virginia, children can still wed at 16 with parental consent. State-level bans face opposition from the usual set of Christian conservatives but also some civil-liberties groups, who fear they infringe on the right to marry. Meanwhile, thousands of children are getting married every year, most of them girls. “There certainly is a lot more child marriage happening than people are aware of,” Casey Carter Swegman of the Tahirih Justice Center said. “It’s a little hypocritical for the United States to be pointing its finger constantly at other countries and telling them to end child marriage when the majority of our states also still allow it.” Why are bans on child marriage so difficult to legalize? Sarah Jones reports on how a recent abuse case brought child marriage back into the limelight — and explains why it’s so much more common than most Americans realize: https://lnkd.in/gXWFNmM5

Between 2018 to 2023, the number of fee-based practices grew by 83.1 percent and an estimated 10 and 20 percent of primary-care physicians now work within them. These practices include concierge medicine and direct primary care, where patients pay a fee not necessarily for high-end amenities but for an easier time getting an appointment or a call back. In both concierge medicine and DPC, physicians say they see fewer patients and offer better care. Since DPC doesn’t accept insurance, doctors also say it allows them to avoid certain Sisyphean administrative tasks. They also tend to earn more income without pulling 12-hour days. Proponents see membership medicine as the future of primary care, a win-win system that benefits everyone — except, of course, the millions who can’t afford to buy into it (Private Medical on the Upper East Side charges around $40,000 a year for adults and $25,000 for children, while MD2 runs slightly cheaper at $2,500 per month) and are increasingly likely to struggle to find a primary-care doctor at all. Currently, the nation is some 13,000 PCPs short of what the population requires, and it’s been predicted that by 2038, patients will face a shortage of 70,610 PCPs, or roughly five times the current deficit. More than 100 million Americans do not have consistent access to a PCP. The rise of concierge and DPC medicine is far from the only factor feeding the shortage. Pandemic burnout–driven exits from the field and baby-boomer doctors retiring are known contributors as well. Still, experts say, the shift to concierge medicine is something of a warning signal. “When a physician converts to one of these models, there are fewer physicians available to treat the general population,” says Jordan Weiss, an assistant professor at the NYU Grossman School of Medicine. Read Katie Arnold-Ratliff’s full report on the growth of concierge clinics and why some PCPs see their career choice as the only solution to a broken system: https://lnkd.in/gYGtg6-J

On a scale of bodega wine to Cabernet Cabaret, where does Cat Cohen fit? This is NYQ, a series where we find out how “New York” notable New Yorkers really are. Disagree with Cat's answers? Let us know yours in the comments below.

Lauren, 39, retired four years ago after grinding through years of corporate work at a tech company and supplementing her income with any freelance gigs she could find. She didn’t get any crazy stock options or windfalls; instead, she’s a member of the FIRE movement, which preaches extreme frugality in service of saving and investing as much money as possible. She saved $1 million by the time she was 35; her husband is saving their second million, and he’s on track to retire soon too. What’s life like as a retiree in your 30s? Lauren sleeps eight to ten hours a night, fosters animals, reads, and volunteers. But she’s also the first to admit she’s a little lonely. All her friends are still working and will be for decades. And she can’t shake the fear that, despite having a fully paid-off house, no debt, and a seven-figure investment account, it may not be enough. Read why she’s contemplating going back to work and why she considers herself more ambitious than ever: https://lnkd.in/g-qx872Q

The #LookBook went to the Guyanese Nurses’ Ball, where dozens of nurses donned their gowns and danced at Antun’s banquet hall. See all of their looks: https://lnkd.in/gnSfKMA9

Even people who aren’t familiar with Mexico City’s food scene likely know about El Califa de León, owing to the 60-year-old institution’s reputation as the first taqueria to be awarded a Michelin star. After receiving the honor in 2024, it became clear to third-generation owner José Andrés Hernández Elizalde and his father, Mario Hernández, that it was time to think about opening outside of its hometown. But where to go? That year, the restaurant partnered with Tacombi on a ten-week pop-up tour to New York, Chicago, Miami, and Washington, D.C., that sold over 180,000 tacos nationwide; New York was “easily” the most enthusiastic market and inadvertently won the bid to house the taqueria’s expansion. Instead of tapping hospitality behemoths or venture-capital firms to fund and oversee the expansion, they turned to family and friends, who in turn furnished the bulk of the financial backing needed for the expansion. “This has been a family business forever,” Hernández Elizalde says. The restaurant is planning to open its new Flatiron location at the end of August. Despite the new location, the approach is the same as it’s ever been: the same concise menu of tacos (prime rib eye, tenderloin, pork chop, and New York strip), placed in tortillas made with masa from Bushwick’s Sobre Masa and designed to be doused in homemade rojo or verde salsa. “We’re not adapting the taco to the U.S. market — we’re bringing the real thing,” Hernández Elizalde says. Read more about the arrival of Mexico City’s most celebrated taqueria in New York City: https://lnkd.in/g-ABt8SJ