During the 2024 Paris Olympics, the world’s biggest brands bet on athlete partnerships to call beauty to the forefront of sports. Ahead of the curve however, Glossier staked their claim with USA’s WNBA well before the trend, as the division’s first-ever beauty partner back in 2020.
Now, the two are teaming up for a campaign in celebration of three new Glossier Lip Gloss shades—bronze, brown, and pink—marking them as the latest athlete-approved must-haves on and off the court.
“The WNBA and Glossier are leading the conversation around the intersection of beauty and sports,” Glossier’s VP of product development Emily Trillaud tells ESSENCE. “We want to change how the world thinks about beauty and champion female empowerment.” With Black women in sports often kept in a box, long-lasting athlete-proof makeup products are bridging the gap between the game, beauty, and the ones playing.
“As athletes, we get seen as one way on the court,” Connecticut Suns center Brionna Jones—who stars in the brand’s gloss campaign— says. “I remember Glossier being aligned when people felt like we didn’t really have much to give to pop culture or beauty,” Seattle Storm point guard Skylar Diggins-Smith—also appearing in the campaign— adds, calling the new Lip Gloss “symbolic.” “The WNBA is at its brightest moment right now.”
Expanding into more light-catching shades, Glossier first launched their signature Lip Gloss in 2017. Then, they introduced two permanent gloss shades in “red” and “holographic.” Now, “almost four years later—we’re thrilled to extend our family of gloss colors once again by adding these three new shades,” Trillaud says, giving classic ‘90s makeup a gloss-ier finish.
“As you might imagine, we adore a great gloss at Glossier, and given our brand’s name, there was immense pressure to deliver a perfect formula,” she says. Landing on a plush formula enriched with vitamin E and jojoba oil, the new Lip Gloss maintains the same sheer shine from previous colors, except with added glitter in the new bronze and pink shades.
“They’re beautiful when worn solo for a sheer shine, but they can also boost more pigmented products when layered on top,” she says, with the brown shade remaining shimmer-free. “We’ve been obsessed with penciling a bit of Lip Line underneath these for a neutral look with a little extra polish.”
