Brace Yourself: Gwyneth Paltrow Has Some Really Poignant Things to Say About 'Big Little Lies'
"It was a beautiful dismantling of the falseness of how women think they need to convince their friends that they're superhuman or not enough just the way they are."
If the GOOP empire is any indication, women want to look, eat, own their sexuality, and smell like Gwyneth Paltrow. To achieve the latter, we plan on bathing in GOOP's new fragrance Shiso—a cool, spicy, and earthy bouquet inspired by the Japanese flower—all summer long.
In honor of the scent's launch, we caught up with Paltrow to talk the art of fragrance, the power of going barefoot, sexual taboos, and Big Little Lies—because yes, she's as maniacally obsessed as you are.
On GOOP's new Shiso fragrance:
"I have a fantastic relationship with our nose and when we had our first meeting, I said I would love it to be as layered as the fall fragrance, but to have it be sparkly, optimistic, and cleaner. He has all the scents distilled in tiny and super potent dilutions, and then you can smell different kinds of flowers, plants, and bark. It's quite painstaking. We ended up with Shiso, which I am totally obsessed with!
On editing down her fragrance wardrobe:
"I've always loved fragrance. I have a big collection of fragrances and I love the bottles, but unfortunately so many of them have toxic ingredients. Starting GOOP, I've learned way too much about what's hidden in fragrances, so I really only use non-toxic fragrance right now. I use our first perfume, this one, and then I use the ones that we are working on so I've become a GOOP convert. I always have worn them seasonally, which is why we're doing this a seasonal scent. I like changing. When spring comes you have a new fragrance."
goop Fragrance edition 02 - shiso, $165; goop.com.
The ultimate daily digest for women of power, purpose, and style.
Women deserve to have a luxurious skincare line that isn't full of parabens, carcinogens, and plastics.
On why natural ingredients are important:
"The word fragrance is a little bit like a Trojan horse because companies can hide anything behind that one word and say, Oh, it's our trade secret—we don't want anyone to produce it or copy it. The laws haven't been changed in a long time and unfortunately that lets companies who make synthetic fragrance use chemicals that are not good for us. Almost all of synthetic fragrances have endocrine-disrupting chemicals in them, which isn't good for women or developing women. Our hormones are always in flux and we should really stay away from endocrine disruptors. Unfortunately, conventional fragrances are full of them. Women deserve to have a luxurious skincare line that isn't full of parabens, carcinogens, and plastics."
On the "earthing" technique:
"I'm a big barefoot girl. It's incredibly grounding, literally. Not only energetically, but spiritually grounding to be barefoot and touching the earth. It sounds a little hippie-ish, but I think that it works."
Holding onto judgements about your life, body, and sexuality is damaging to the way you were born.
On GOOP tackling sexual taboos like anal sex:
"Our mission for ourselves, friends, and audience is that we believe in the wellness of the whole woman. I think holding onto judgements about your life, body, and sexuality is damaging to the way you were born. We strive to unearth subjects that women feel strange about, whether it's body image, sexuality, health, or relationships because we want to shine light on these things and give women the permission to feel like if Goop is talking about X, Y, and Z, then we can talk about it too. That's feedback that we get a lot because we are coming at it from an educational place. We want to educate ourselves, we want to ask questions, and we want to pass on the information. It's not for salaciousness. It's positioned in a way where people feel that it isn't dirty or pornographic. They can ask questions or talk to a girlfriend about it. We want to start interesting conversations."
On why Big Little Lies is so important:
"We are living in this culture now where it's really exciting to be a woman. We have taken permission to be whatever kind of woman we want to be. However, we are also still putting pressure on ourselves to be X, Y, and Z—to come off as not being flawed. There's this pressure that women are putting on themselves because they perceive that other women are putting on them. I thought it was a beautiful dismantling of the falseness of how women think they need to convince their friends that they're superhuman or not enough just the way that they are. I thought it was really relevant and resonant and I just loved it!"
It was a beautiful dismantling of the falseness of how women think they need to convince their friends that they're superhuman or not enough just the way they are.
On why they should green light a second season of Big Little Lies:
"I didn't read the book, so I was completely a virgin to it. I don't know if people are like, Oh well the book stopped, so what would it be? But I think that these are such important topics to explore."
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Lauren Valenti is Vogue’s former senior beauty editor. Her work has also appeared on ELLE.com, MarieClaire.com, and in In Style. She graduated with a liberal arts degree from Eugene Lang College, The New School for Liberal Arts, with a concentration on Culture and Media Studies and a minor in Journalism.