The Death Of The Makeup Counter

On the ground floor of Nordstrom’s in my hometown, it was impossible to venture out to other departments without waltzing through the cluster of makeup counters. The smells of bergamot and vanilla were so strong they’d send you into a dizzying haze. Meeting eye-line with the girls behind the counter meant it was game over.

I kept my head down and focused while walking to avoid interacting with Danielle from Jo Malone or Monica from Lancome in their all-black outfits. Because I knew even if I grazed one of the display perfume bottles in passing, I’d find myself sucked into the whole thing they do at makeup counters — selling of anti-aging serums, the shade-matching, the swatching of lipsticks. God forbid they attempt to offer me one of their beauty services – eyebrow tinting or a lesson in liner and lashes – while I’m reluctantly buying a $20 gloss.

Many other women have found the makeup counters daunting and overwhelming, inspiring anything but a purchase, even when getting your makeup done in a chair at the M.A.C. counter was all the rage. Former Glamour Beauty editor Petra Guglielmetti expressed her frustration with the experience in 2009: “If I want to try something, I'll ask. It gets irksome having to decline five different offers just to get on the escalator. Maybe this is just me having a bitchy antisocial personality, but it's how I feel.”

I have a history with this type of makeup shopping – well, tagging along. The mid-2000s were Bobbi Brown’s heyday, and it’s as if all other makeup brands were unimportant to my mom. The early aughts had just started to explore more natural makeup options. Like other older women, my mom streamlined her process by visiting the one place that felt familiar, predictable, and personal: the Bobbi Brown makeup counter in Bloomingdale’s. Her vanity at home, while caked in a veil of smoky eye-colored dust, was aspirationally cohesive. When I close my eyes, I can remember how it felt to gently pull open her drawer and glide my fingers across the coordinated black lacquer Bobbi Brown packaging, moving from the circle-shaped eyeshadow pots and creams to the square-shaped, shimmery blush blocks. I couldn’t wait to have my own collection.

I didn’t find the behavior of the Bobbi Brown salesgirls to be in-your-face or their intentions insidious. Instead, I believed you could never have a negative experience in a place surrounded by other women playing with liners and powders on a Friday afternoon. Everyone there always seemed so helpful. They wanted to turn you into your best you.

I always wanted to ask my mom how she settled upon that one brand for practically my whole life. She passed away seven years ago, and I’ll never know what truly sparked her decades of loyalty to Bobbi. My mom trusted the hell out of B.B. as someone would their best friend.

Since my mom’s passing, I’ve noticed the relationship women have with makeup counters has also died.

The pandemic permanently altered our inclinations to shop in person, especially when technology that enables you to try on makeup virtually exists. Dupe culture has also exploded, with drugstore brands competing with comparable formulas at affordable prices for some of the makeup counters’ biggest hits. Generally, the brands represented in department stores aren’t as trendy or friendly to the wallets of younger consumers looking to stay up-to-date on trends in the beauty world.

Yet the less obvious reason for the downfall of the makeup counter lies in the fact that we claim we don’t need the old-fashioned type of help that the counter offers. Instead, we’ve done our research. We’ve read the product testing articles, seen the TikToks from whichever influencer we’ve decided to trust, and compared makeup routines with those in our inner circle. Asking for an employee’s product recommendations in person nowadays feels disgraceful to the modern beauty community. It proves you didn’t spend the time online to ensure you’re buying the most talked about, sought-after products from a variety of brands. Why would you ask an employee, a stranger, for beauty advice when you could develop a stronger parasocial relationship with a self-proclaimed beauty guru on social media and follow their recommendations?

Even though I’m equipped with all of this online knowledge, I still feel like I have no idea what I’m doing when it comes to my face. I slap on the moisturizer, the primer, the foundation, the concealer, the setting spray, and blush from brands I’ve heard about from TikTok and Instagram. A swipe of mascara and whatever lip gloss I haven’t managed to lose completes the look. I never found the one influencer or publication whose tips I could swear by; thus, my product lineup is haphazard, comprised of items I settled on because I felt overwhelmed by the sheer number of products. I’m typically only partially happy with how my canvas turns out. I know I should feel more pleased with the final result, but I’m already late by the time I’m pointing out all the components of my look that I want to dissolve off my face in that instant. Feeling dissatisfied time and time again made me question the validity of the beauty advice I have accumulated online that has shaped my current makeup routine. This advice, I came to realize, wasn’t tailored to my skin at all.

I believed a trip to the counters at Macy’s could solve my beauty confusion, and I expected employees to be borderline harassing me to try new creams and potions. I was honestly ready to accept their recommendations for what I should use on my skin and be absolved of the responsibility of researching products online ahead of time. Entrusting someone with my face besides my dermatologist freaks me out, but the salesgirls deserved a chance. By customers subconsciously ruling out assistance from beauty counter employees, the employees have listened and reacted.

My most recent trip to the department store didn’t actually involve anyone trying to sell me anything. Rather, there was barely anyone working behind the counters. I poked around the different displays of foundations and brow gels to see if any employee would approach me. It didn’t work. To my surprise, I was left alone to shop independently.

Normally, I’d be happy to pick products on my own. But this time, I wanted to enjoy a personalized experience, one that has come to be expected when shopping from the higher-end brands at department stores. The type of shopping that had my mom and the woman working behind the Bobbi Brown counter on Fridays on a first-name basis. Maybe I’d find my Bobbi Brown equivalent with the individualized suggestions of a beauty counter employee. When I ultimately left Macy’s empty-handed, I reflected on how the counters’ once-uplifting energy was replaced with a deep feeling of isolation from being the only one awkwardly wandering among the selection of Laura Mercier foundations and Dior fragrances that greatly exceeded my price range.

I was in mourning for the beauty counter that once was. Its death signifies a threat to the ritual bonding over our beauty routines. Girls establish this bond over the physical act of playing with makeup in our early years, sharing lip gloss palettes and makeup stolen from our moms’ vanities. As we mature, the bond only strengthens as we age into phases of life when wearing makeup becomes expected, and getting ready together for school dances with drugstore mascara becomes a new rite of passage. The beauty counter feels like the last place adult women can go to nurture this bond by treating makeup as experimental, fun, and empowering.

That corner of the department store served as a safe space and allowed for women to lament about their frustrations with their current makeup routines, and maybe bigger issues in their lives too. For my mom, it was an escape from a demanding, unglamorous job as a doctor. Women used to be able to go with their girlfriends or even by themselves to test out the latest products, with guidance from an expert. Even if there was some intense persuading on behalf of the salesgirls, they helped women navigate the billion-dollar beauty industry on a personal level that we can only attempt to recreate now. But I know it won’t come close to those moments I spent by my mom’s side, tapping on the counter’s glass as an employee helped her select the lipstick shade that would be hers forever.