Gwynergy!

Yep, Gwyneth Paltrow knows how to get everyone’s attention, calling beauty and wellness trends years before the world catches on. And now the actress-turned-health-sage is letting us in on the next big things. We’re listening…

- Jean Godfrey-June

Lunch at my desk has always presented something of a conflict for visitors. You might score a free beauty product or two (I’ve been a beauty editor for most of my career), but the taste of your salad or sandwich might be sent in an odd direction by the billion or so fragrances in various stages of consideration around my office. Lunch at the desk of my current boss, beauty-wellness-lifestyle guru Gwyneth Paltrow, is, today, much in that vein: we’re surrounded by sample bottles – all candidates for Goop’s next “clean” perfume. Every one of the possibilities is free of the toxins common in conventional fragrances, but jam-packed with incredible-smelling plant essences. Gwyneth’s been spraying her favourites on the wrists of fellow Goop-ers (there are 72 of us) all morning, gauging reactions, considering and reconsidering. Her office, accordingly, is a cloud of earthy-spicy-fresh-woodsy scent. “I’m in perfume-testing hell,” she sighs, happily.

Gwyneth, or GP, as my co-workers and I generally call her, is entirely undisturbed by the intensely fragrant air around us. It could be because she’s coming offan eight-day, goat’smilk-only cleanse and practically any food that’s not goat’s milk would taste good to her. Or it could be that the stew she’s sprinkling Maldon salt into is indeed, as she says, “f*cking delicious.”

“Let’s see, it’s got butternut, chicken sausage…” she fishes around in it. “Chickpeas! Japanese turnips, chard, carrots…”

Fresh from Goop’s new test kitchen, the stew may very well end up on Goop’s Instagram, in one of GP’s three-and-counting New York Times best-selling cookbooks or in a food story on the site. GP doesn’t so much drink the KoolAid (or goat’s milk) as live it, eat it, wear it and share it with the world.