What was once a tiny and mighty beauty blog called Into The Gloss has become a bona fide NYC startup: Glossier, with a ragtag team of 35+ jogging up and down the stairwell of our Soho office building, spread out across three floors. Why are we here? We're creating a new kind of beauty company from the ground up—one that acknowledges the hopes, dreams, and desires of women today, and gives them the tools (both digitally and physically) to take ownership over their beauty routines. Who are we? Well, a lot of us began like you: as readers. And we'd like for you to get to know us a little better—what we each do, where we come from, and what we're excited about. First up: say hi to Tom Newton.

'My freshman year of high school, I had this really great teacher—her name was Mrs. Sutter—and she did photo classes. She told me 'You need to study David Bailey, and you need to study Steven Meisel.' We learned on film—I wasn't allowed to touch anything digital for the first year. I look through them sometimes...I actually Instagrammed something recently that I shot back when I was in high school.

I found ITG on accident just from looking up models and wanting to see interviews with them on The Fashion Spot. They linked to Karlie Kloss’s Top Shelf and after reading it, I got really hooked on it. It’s hard to find interviews with models that aren’t completely simple. Like, ‘What’s your favorite color? What’s your favorite food?’ That sort of thing. They're real people.”

What do you do for Glossier?

I'm the New Media Editor—I take most of the photos and do a lot of the interviews. I also make sure that each story has the right visual accompaniment for it, which sometimes is a video and sometimes it's a post on Instagram and sometimes it's a gif. Every once in a while, I'll write too...I love that.

Where are you from?

The Adirondacks

Dessert choice:

Doughnuts

What's your sign?

Taurus + very proud of it

Favorite ITG stories you've worked on:

All the NYFW stories— Miranda Kerr's 7 Rules For Adulthood, Gigi Hadid's Top Shelf, and our '70s shoot with Benjamin Puckey

$20 + an evening in NYC—what do you do?

Shake Shack + 16 Handles and a walk home through Fort Greene with friends

Number one magazine choice at the bodega:

Oyster, Russh, Self Service or Vogue Italia

Backstage moments you'll never forget:

Running into Karlie Kloss on the streets of Chelsea my first NYFW in the city and saying hello and snapping a few photos of her THEN her regramming them—I felt like I had arrived.

Dream magazine cover:

Edita Vilkeviciute, Anais Mali, and Liu Wen on the cover of Vogue shot in Alaska, photographed by Mikael Jansson and styled by Karl Templer

Favorite beauty product:

Avène Clearance Cleanser

—as told to ITG

Tom Newton photographed by Jen Steele.

For more about the team, read Emily Weiss' fifth anniversary letter to ITG.