When welcoming her latest product into the Goop fold, Gwyn turned to “sexy church scents” for inspiration.
The actress, blogger and business empress did away with easy, breezy scents when designing her ‘edition 01’ perfume. In an interview with The Cut, she said she turned to her “other hidden side” when creating the ‘mystical’ scent with perfumer Douglas Little.
The artificial ingredient-free scent is a rich mix of burning wood and incense. Sticking to her Goop guns, Gwyneth says: “This is a way that we can create something that was non-toxic and stay within the ethos of Goop, offering the modern woman a better, cleaner version of a typical scent. But it’s complex, romantic, sexy, cozy, and all of these things. It’s not just rubbing lavender oil on yourself from the health-food store.”
Gwyn’s daughter, Apple, now a teenager experimenting with makeup and YouTube tutorials, was a main motivator behind the new enterprise. She’s a typical teenage girl lusting over pink body scrub, and Gwyneth can only do her best to educate her and let her make her own decisions, although she adds: “There really should be some kind of regulation so girls who are in puberty aren’t putting endocrine disrupters all over their bodies.”
The mum also revealed what different emotions smell to her. Love and home smells like “onions sautéing in butter”. It’s a strong smell she associates with her own mother’s cooking. Heartbreak, on the other hand, smells like cigarettes: “When I think about all my worst break-ups or when my dad died, I remember smoking to get through. I think of that raw tobacco and burning tobacco smell.”
As for happiness? That smells of “lilies — fresh lilies in a vase.” But don’t expect this to be in the next perfume. There are going to be four fragrances for the four seasons and as amazing as fresh lilies smell, Gwyn says she wouldn’t want it in a perfume.
