Stepping in GOOP

Your email has been sent.

Thanks for recommending The Daily Beast!

X Close

Mark Stewart/Camera Press/Retna Gwyneth Paltrow's new website about living the way-too-good life could not have launched at a worse time.

In the beginning, there was GOOP. When it launched in September, Gwyneth Paltrow's oddly named venture into the World Wide Web consisted of nothing but a spare gray and white design and a vague promise of future inspiration. “My life is good because I am not passive about it,” Paltrow wrote in her inaugural address, and she had some advice to give: “Don’t be lazy. Workout and stick with it. GOOP. Make it great.”

Just recently, Paltrow began adding more content to the site, under the five categories MAKE, GO, GET, SEE, DO. She sends out a weekly newsletter with hints for cooking, baking, shopping, eating, traveling, art gallery-going—in short, how to make each day beautiful. "Cook a meal for someone you love. Pause before reacting. Clean out your space."

“The hotels are on the pricey side," Paltrow writes on the site’s GO section, "but my GOOP girls are doing some research into some more affordable places, which we will personally try before recommending."

GOOP, Paltrow enthused, will encourage us to "Invest in what's real."

And what's real, judging from the first GOOP newsletters, is a sugar-free diet and a pair of Giuseppe Zanotti gray pumps. The site is more about an aspirational (read: unattainable) lifestyle than helpful tips. In the current reality-based market, Gwyneth’s timing could not have been more awkward. In fact, she may have gone from a venerable fashion icon to a new irrelevancy almost overnight.

Paltrow amply deserves her style icon status, and the venture may have looked glamorous two years ago, but the shaky economy has swiftly and effectively rendered the ability to look smashing while disembarking from a trans-Atlantic flight somewhat…less pressing. What might have seemed a slight stretch to members of her intended audience just a few months back is now likely to induce cramps or at least giggles. As layoffs mount and airlines cut routes, suggesting a quick trip to the Prado sounds less madcap sophisticate, more just disconnected with the world. Paltrow, usually so self-possessed, seems somewhat hung out to dry here. A heart necklace from Chopard is a "fun idea"? Well, sure! Who needs electricity anyway?

So if it’s not too soon to talk about potential upsides to our financial meltdown, I'd propose that a temporary moratorium on celebrity lifestyle recommendations may be one of them. I've long been fixated, low-budget Edith Wharton-like, on what happens when different strata of society rub up against each other. Is it possible that now, brandishing one's piles of money could become a career liability? On GOOP, for example, Paltrow recommends an extended stay at London's Blakes Hotel, where a night in a standard double costs £265 ($475) exclusive of 17.5 percent VAT. Paltrow also plugs a Zooey gray T-shirt ($58) and pairs it with Alice + Olivia tights and black Bottega Veneta riding boots ($975).

To be fair, GOOP does get the balance between high- and low-end right on occasion. "It could be Zara, it could be Balenciaga,” Paltrow writes in her November newsletter, juxtaposing a down-market retailer with a legendary couture house, “but a well-cut, well-proportioned black dress has gotten me through many a fashion crisis." She just might be one of us, after all! But then it’s back to a Tod's cashmere trench.

View as Single Page