Gwyneth Paltrow has opened a pop-up store in London, to mark the tenth anniversary of her lifestyle brand Goop. Goop, which began as a weekly email newsletter to subscribers that featured "a little bit of everything that makes up my life" is now a global lifestyle website, worth £200 million.
Ms Paltrow, who was raised "both Jewish and Christian" (her late father, Bruce Paltrow was Jewish) and is engaged to television writer Brad Falchuk who is also Jewish, came up with the idea for the brand while sitting around her kitchen table in the London home she used to share with ex-husband, Coldplay frontman, Chris Martin.
The pop-up shop, in Westbourne Grove, West London, will sell items from the Goop website, including £54 crystal-infused water bottles that are said to give your drinking "positive energy" and a £3,600 diamond constellation ear cuff. Until yesterday, these items were only available online. Now, however, you can head down to one of London’s more expensive neighbourhoods and bag the products over the counter.
Over the last decade, Goop has received a fair amount of criticism. After promoting a £100 DIY coffee enema kit, medical professionals hit back saying that the equipment could prove harmful for people’s health.
The brand also came under fire after publishing an article encouraging women to get down to their "leanest liveable weight."
According to The Independent, critics described the article as "dangerous", with one renaming the piece "How to be as thin as possible without dying."
Another stated: "Never have four words grouped together made me quite so furious."
Goop also claimed that its £65 ‘Jade and Rose Quartz eggs’ could "balance hormones, regulate menstrual cycles, prevent uterine prolapse, and increase bladder control" but a recent legal ruling in America found that Paltrow’s company could not support these claims with medical evidence and, following a £112,000 settlement in the US for "unsubstantiated claims", barred Goop from making any claims about the efficacy of its products that aren’t backed by reliable science.
The pop-up shop is due to be open until January 2019.
