60 minutes in Carolyn Bessette's beauty store
60 minutes in Carolyn Bessette's beauty store
An interview with CO Bigelow's Alec Ginsberg
Good morning. A post-Christmas GLOOM is setting in and I am doing everything in my power to battle it. I am doing a weird end of the year newsletter on Friday ahead of some Feed Me changed in 2024, which will also include a Q+A. If you have any burning questions (shoot BIG) email me emilyesundberg@gmail.com
One of the best friendships I’ve made through this letter is Alec Ginsberg. He’s the co-owner and COO of CO Bigelow (he’s also a pharmacist there), but the reason we actually started talking was because my dad was one of his teachers growing up. I always want to talk to Alec, he has so many thoughtful takes on a lot of what I cover in this letter — beauty, pharmaceuticals, and New York City’s subcultures.
CO Bigelow is a landmark — it’s been been providing prescriptions, healing remedies, unique and unusual beauty products, and hard to find apothecary items since 1838. Something that I find impressive about their story is that the pharmacy is the passing of ownership from employer to employee. Since 1939, three generations of Ginsberg’s have owned and operated the shop, passing from father to son to grandson, with a fourth generation (Alec) joining the pharmacy in 2016. The shelves have range, from Mason Pearson hairbrushes to tampons to Westman Atelier lipstick.
Last week I was scrolling on TikTok and saw a few videos blowing up about where Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy bought her iconic headbands — at CO Bigelow. I took a visit to the West Village and hung out with Alec in the offices above the pharmacy and spoke to him about what those videos did for the store’s sales (a lot), his thoughts on shopping in-person vs. online, and what other New York establishments he considers to be on CO Bigelow’s level. (This is transcribed audio from a longer interview, and I paid for the AI one, not human, so forgive me if I missed any typos).
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A: “Yeah, so that TikTok.., we had nothing to do with it. I don't know where that person came from.”
E: How did you first see it? Did somebody send it to you?
“A couple of girlfriends of mine sent it to me, and then I sent it to my dad and we didn't know who the person was. I don't even know where she heard that Carolyn Bessette used to shop here. It is true, but there wasn't a recent article. The Vogue story came after when we were trying to play it up, but yeah, we saw that and we saw how many views it got and we were like, man, we should probably order some more of these headbands. And we made a decision not to put them online just because we wanted people to come discover the store and that's exactly what's happened over the past month. Our sales of hair accessories have been up 5x from this time last year, which is really significant. It's a lot of women in the 25-35-year-old range who are coming in. I see them walk in and say, “Wow, we didn't know this was here.” And then they come for the headband, but they wind up looking around and discovering a lot of other things.”
Do you have a lot of products on your shelves that aren't on Sephora’s or Ulta’s?