I Attended My First-Ever Fashion Week Event With Mary Kay, & It Was As Fun As It Looked

I’ll be honest: I had zero expectations when it came to attending my first-ever New York Fashion Week event. I know how different these events can be, from front-row-only shows to parties where everyone seems to be wearing sunglasses indoors. Plus, plenty of them are designed to make you feel like you’re on the wrong side of a velvet rope. But as soon as I walked into Mary Kay’s “Beauty Is More Beautiful Shared” pop-up event at Gansevoort Plaza during New York Fashion Week, I knew I was in for a much better experience. The first thing I saw settled it: a huge makeup counter lined with seats and mirrors, where you could sit down and try products. Count me in.

The campaign behind Mary Kay’s event launched on Sept. 1, and the brand calls it the largest global consumer-facing campaign in its history. The pop-up was how it showed up in the middle of Manhattan. I came for the “first Fashion Week event” experience. What I got was a lip gloss obsession, a conversation with one of the people behind the campaign, and a note-writing station that I could not stop thinking about. Was it as fun as it looked? Short answer: yes.

The Vanity Counter

When I arrived at the Mary Kay event, I headed straight for the beauty station, which meant sitting down at that huge vanity counter where I could test products instead of squinting at a swatch under bad lighting. I tried a few things and landed on two favorites: The Matte Eye Shadow Stick ($20) in Moonshadow and the Unlimited Lip Gloss ($20) in Unique Mauve. It sounds small, but there’s something about picking your own colors in a mirror next to strangers doing the same thing that makes a makeup counter feel less like shopping and more like a shared activity, which, it turns out, is exactly the point. 

Talking to Dr. Lucy Gildea

The conversation I’d been looking forward to was with Dr. Lucy Gildea, Mary Kay’s Chief Brand and Scientific Officer, who spoke with me about the idea behind the campaign. According to Dr. Gildea, part of the campaign’s job is to reintroduce the Mary Kay brand to a younger generation instead of leaving it a well-kept secret. Gildea described the approach as telling the brand’s story in a modern, fresh way, one that’s multigenerational by design, with an “invite everyone” mindset rather than a single target age. The line that stuck with me was her explanation of the idea at the center of it: “Beauty is more meaningful when it’s experienced with someone else.” 

In the campaign’s launch announcement, Gildea put it this way: “In a world where beauty has often resonated as a solo act, we’re reclaiming beauty as a shared experience, celebrating the power of sharing, supporting, and uplifting one another.” Mary Kay frames the campaign as a response to an increasingly digital world, and for a generation that mostly sees beauty through filters, tutorials, and GRWM videos, a campaign built around sitting next to another person is a pretty deliberate counterpoint. 

The Crowd

What I didn’t expect was the crowd. There were so many girls my age at the event, and there were older women who, I’d guess, have known about Mary Kay for years. From what I know of Fashion Week events, you can usually tell upon arrival what age range a brand is targeting. This showcase was entirely different, highlighting that multigenerational idea Gildea describes, except I saw it in person instead of just hearing about it. 

The Womankind Notes

The part that moved me most was the note station in partnership with Womankind, where you could write messages of encouragement to survivors of domestic violence, human trafficking, and gender-based violence. It’s easy to treat a pop-up’s charitable tie-in as a side quest between the makeup and the photo wall. But sitting down to write a stranger a note — someone you’ll never meet who might really need one — made the campaign’s tagline feel less like a slogan and more like an instruction. A beauty brand centering unity in womanhood and giving people a way to say something kind to women in hard situations is what turned “shared beauty” from a concept into something I actually did. I also took a turn at the Polaroid wall, because it’s Fashion Week and photographic evidence is basically the law. 

So, Was It As Fun As It Looked?

Yes, and I say that as someone who walked in with no expectations and a healthy suspicion of anything with a tagline. But at the end of the day, “Beauty Is More Beautiful Shared” is something I can easily get behind in practice — especially after I sat at a mirror next to a stranger, picked out my own favorite shades with a bit of neighbor support, and wrote a note to a woman who needed one. For a first-ever Fashion Week event, I’d say that’s a pretty good start. 

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