Gwyneth Paltrow is ready to move into your livin8 room
Here’s why you might not say no
I came home from work recently to find that Gwyneth Paltrow had let herself in. She looked relaxed: Her long blond hair fell in loose waves, and her soft-looking khaki green jumpsuit was cropped to reveal that she had kicked off her shoes. I like people who make themselves at home.
Still, it was a little disconcerting to see her there, grinning at me from the front of my (typically human-free) CB2 catalog, which arrived sometime in the first few days of September. I shouldn’t have been surprised — though she’s no longer working as an actress, Paltrow remains more ubiquitous than in her movie star days.
Just after she popped up at my house hawking furniture, her company,
Goop, percolated back to the top of the news feed for paying $145,000 in civil penalties when an investigation by the California Food, Drug and Medical Devices Task Force found claims on the Goop website were misleading consumers. Three products were found to have been falsely advertised: the Inner Judge Flower Essence Blend, which was touted to keep depression at bay, and two stone eggs (one quartz, one jade) designed to be placed in the vagina.
The eggs are still for sale on the Goop website, for $55 and $65 each, but claims that they regulate menstrual cycles and treat incontinence have been replaced with talk of chakras and a stern instruction to use as directed. Goop has claimed no liability, calling the case an “honest disagreement.”
Critics have likened Paltrow to a modern-day snake-oil salesman, pointing to these claims and others on the site. And she has long been considered part of a list of unlikable celebrities. But that hasn’t stopped her brand from spreading like a virus.
Why? “Perceptions of a person are always different from the perceptions of the product,” says psychologist Peter Noel Murray, whose work centers on consumer behavior. “Gwyneth Paltrow has got this background that is pampered and privileged and whatever, and she’s kooky, and she’s out of the mainstream. People who buy this stuff, they respond to those things. It gives meaning to their lives.”
Murray points out that, even though we often don’t realize it, we buy things that match our own emotions.
Thus, Goop customers might respond to Paltrow’s brand not by thinking they are following trends dictated by a celebrity, but that they are tapping into an iconoclastic streak in themselves.
“They’ll think of themselves as individuals,” Murray says. “They walk a different path. Or they are people who maybe are not individuals, but they want to be perceived as individuals. That’s what makes the whole luxury market work, is how it affects who we want to be.”
Paltrow also serves another handy retail function, says Northwestern University marketing professor Tim Calkins: “Celebrity brands bring differentiation. When there are many choices, the celebrity brand stands out.”
In other words, in a world with thousands of berry red lipsticks, she helps us choose the Vapour Beauty Aura Multi-use Stain. And thus, having made inroads into our medicine cabinets, kitchens (“chip clips just got a whole lot chicer”) and closets (“not your typical turtleneck”), it’s only natural that Paltrow would have plans for the rest of the house.
She has worked with sought-after design firm Roman and Williams, who designed the first Goop brickand-mortar store, in a space in a Santa Monica shopping mall that Paltrow remembers as a childhood favorite candy store, and her New York penthouse, which featured a sofa-sized swing in the living room. She also tried out well-known designer Windsor Smith’s Room in a Box concept, redesigning her Amagansett, New York, living room with the designer for a Goop feature.
These environments, it should be said, have little to do with the kind of regular-apartment, easy-to-acquire furniture sold at CB2. Say what you will about the democratization of design: Pieces similar to the sculptural coffee table chosen for Paltrow’s redesigned Windsor Smith room go for around $50,000. Which would buy you about 179 of CB2’S best-selling waterfall acrylic coffee tables.
The divide between her own lifestyle and the lifestyle of pretty much everyone else hasn’t stopped Paltrow from extending her grasp into the mass market, and it shouldn’t, says Murray. “Those people who see themselves as consistent with her products exist in all demographic segments,” he says, “so it’s just as valid for a mass market as it is for a luxury one.”
The best parallel, he says, is the woman who came first to the better-thanyour-lifestyle market: Martha Stewart, who has taken an openly dismissive tone vis-a-vis Paltrow. They have more in common than either would like to admit.
“Look what Martha did,” says Murray. “When she first came out, she was perceived to be elitist, and she crossed over to the mass market. The next thing you know, she was at Home Depot.”
In fact, I was once asked to meet Stewart for an interview at the Home Depot store on North Avenue in Chicago. She was wearing leather pants and rudely turned up her nose at the lavish catered snacks that had been laid out for her, which I hoped the store employees would get to eat later. Still, I sometimes look through her organizational products in the closet aisle when I pass through the store.
“She’s a good example that there are no boundaries, and you are what you make of yourself in that world,” says Murray.
This is obviously not lost on CB2. “We’re excited about the Goop x CB2 collection,” CB2 President Ryan Turf said in a statement, calling the pieces “elegant, yet laid back.” The description is not off base, though the prices are not as laid-back as CB2 buyers are used to.
Flipping through the catalog, I wasn’t sure whether I would like what I saw — honestly, I was sort of rooting against Paltrow. She, like Stewart, has a difficult persona that leaves you feeling you’re hanging around with an ill-wishing friend. Her life is nicer than yours, OK, but she’s also not afraid to let you know that it’s your own fault.
Though I find her endorsements more a cause for skepticism than a cause to buy, my bottom line wavers because, I’m a little embarrassed to admit, some of the products are really nice looking. Paltrow, like Stewart, has style — or knows where to acquire it.
Luckily, furniture is not a miracle-working wellness potion; it succeeds or fails mainly on appearance. CB2’S Goop offerings include a handsome dining table with an interesting shape, dining chairs that echo 1960s Italian design and an upholstered barrel chair that I could covet — would that shearling (very splurge-y for CB2 at a $3,299 price point) look good in the living room?
I wasn’t sure how the chair’s emotional content matched my own emotions. (Mainly, I was wondering whether, if you bought the chair, you’d need to carefully rip all labels off of it, so that you could more convincingly pretend it was not one of those Goop chairs.) Then I noticed the one detail that evoked a clear response: The chair is named the Gwyneth. Perfect — it’s not for me.