Gwyneth Paltrow’s ’90s Style Is Back. That’s Good for Goop.

GWYNETH PALTROW—Goop founder and CEO, quasi-retired actress, enthusiastic marketer of very personal women’s products—has probably appeared on more brands’ mood boards than almost anyone else. For decades, designers have pinned up images of her film characters, from the laconically preppy Margot in 2001’s “The Royal Tenenbaums” to the mid-century heroine Marge Sherwood in 1999’s “The Talented Mr. Ripley” to the green-sheathed Estella in the 1998 update of “Great Expectations.” Not to mention photos of Gwyneth as herself, dressed down with a cigarette alongside Winona Ryder or Brad Pitt in the ’90s, or dressed up in dramatic Valentino on the red carpet. It’s not only professionals that draw inspiration from Ms. Paltrow’s image: Photo-sharing platform

Pinterest

reports that the term “Gwyneth Paltrow style 90s” is being searched twice as much in 2021 as during the same period in 2020. It’s almost cliché for a fashion or film fan to be inspired by her style at this point, given her place in the canon alongside legends such as Jackie O.

Which is why Ms. Paltrow was amused when her own G. Label design team put a trio of photos of her on one of its own mood boards recently. All from her late-’90s minimalist period, they show her in black leather pants, in a white tank gown and in a spaghetti-strapped little black dress. “It’s pretty surreal when it’s you,” she confessed. “At the time, you’re wearing what you like, and then it becomes part of the mythology of dressing.” She still likes those pieces, she said. “Obviously, my lip liner has changed, but I look at a lot of those outfits and I would wear them all today. It’s still very much me.”

Translating that Gwyneth-ness into a line of elevated basics is part of the mission of G. Label, the fashion line launched in 2016 as part of Ms. Paltrow’s Goop empire, which also encompasses live events, podcasts, a television show, a newsletter, and a multi-brand ecommerce business that carries everything from $8 biodegradable cleaning wipes to $33,000 diamond earrings (which are final sale—be careful). Goop garners the most buzz for products in the wellness category: organic face oil, a $66 jade egg meant to be inserted into the vagina for Kegel-like exercises, a Goop-branded vibrator that initially sold out in 24 hours.

The G. Label fashion business has been a relatively quiet segment of the company, although with the recent launch of a well-edited “G. Label Core” collection of classics and the rise in interest around its founder’s prescient ’90s style, that appears primed to change. Ms. Paltrow’s trump card might be her ability to sell clothing to women who want to dress like her. But G. Label’s challenge lies in leveraging Ms. Paltrow’s glamorous halo effect without alienating women by being too aspirational.

G. Label was born of a disruptive, tech-y ambition. A fan of designer labels, Ms. Paltrow didn’t get why their dresses had to cost, as she explained, “thousands and thousands of dollars.” She wondered “if you could take a direct-to-consumer model and apply it to clothing the way that Warby Parker or any number of these other brands have done it.” So she started by tweaking silhouettes inspired by pieces from her own closet, producing them in reputable European factories, and releasing them in monthly, seasonally appropriate drops. Prices typically range from $100 to $600—not Target, but not Chloé, either. The latest drop of “G. Label Core” pieces includes staples like a $525 slipdress that one could imagine Ms. Paltrow wearing to Manhattan’s Indochine restaurant in its heyday, but also a $145 linen-blend T-shirt and $295 wide-legged jeans that would look right for school pick-up in a Los Angeles enclave like Laurel Canyon or Silver Lake.

These clothes have little in common with the sheer tulle Fendi dress Ms. Paltrow wore to last year’s Golden Globes, or the pink Ralph Lauren ballgown she won an Oscar in in 1999. For actresses, she mused, “In certain cases, the right dress can really change your career.” But although splashy red-carpet looks helped bolster her Hollywood fame, they’re not an inspiration for G. Label. Nor does she wear that type of clothing very often anymore. “As a business owner, I don’t leverage fashion that way,” she explained. And what’s more, she said, “I really hope I never have to go to an event again.”

Which is not to say that she’s foundering on a couch in sweatpants (although she did wear plenty of those at home this past year). When not working, she’s often entertaining at home with family and friends. Perhaps the best encapsulation of how Ms. Paltrow’s clean, classic style can express her brand is in the case of her #lifegoals cookbooks. In them, the pictures of her and her family look like photos from an early J. Crew catalog shot through with some Calvin Klein sophistication and a smidge of Ina Garten earthiness. Think: the perfect jean shorts, a crisp white shirt. Jessica Morgan, a co-founder of celebrity-fashion site Go Fug Yourself, noted that the look is a polished version of the way most of us dress. She said, “It really leans into this idea that it’s your friend Gwyneth who’s teaching you how to make these fish tacos, because everybody’s got a friend who comes over sometimes with jeans and a button-down.”

G. Label perpetuates that aesthetic, and for the most part it appears to be working. While the Goop website sells many other established fashion brands—Proenza Schouler, Ganni—clothing from G.Label drove 45% of its fashion business year to date, up 25% from the same period last year. But fashion makes up only 30% of Goop’s total ecommerce business (the rest is wellness, beauty and home), so there’s room for growth. Shaun Kearney, the company’s chief design and merchandising officer, said that more emphasis would be placed on fashion moving forward as part of a “360 lifestyle.” He said, “We built such a really nice foundation now in the business that we do want to be a little bit more vocal about it and a little bit more explicit about it.”

From the design process to the marketing of the line, G. Label revolves around Ms. Paltrow. “She tries on every sample because we want her endorsement,” said Mr. Kearney. That makes good business sense: One of the commonly searched Google search phrases about the star is “How do I dress like Gwyneth Paltrow”? When I ask her this very question, she responds, “I’m true to me. I think that’s the thing, to be really true to yourself–and probably stay away from fringe and tie dye.” But do G. Label customers want to look like themselves—or like Gwyneth—or maybe a bit of both?

As the line grows, so does what G. Label provides, and to whom. “I would never make anything that I really didn’t like, but sometimes there are certain pieces where you have to really keep the customer in mind,” explained Ms. Paltrow. “In certain areas, I would go edgier with silhouettes than we’ll want to for the purposes of commerciality,” she continued, saying that “crazy exaggerated wide-leg pants” are something she loves that don’t necessarily work for other women. The team tells her, “Nobody’s tall enough except for you for these pants.”

Keeping the customer in mind helps G. Label win over loyal customers such as Montreal- and Vancouver-based fitness trainer Drea Wheeler. Ms. Wheeler, 34, who calls herself a “Goop girl,” most recently purchased leggings, sneakers and a sports bra from G. Label’s collaboration with Puma. As someone who works out every day, she can tell when workout wear is legit, and she likes the combination of style and performance with these pieces, as well as other G. Label items. She said, “I buy it, which for someone who gets a lot of stuff for free, is saying something.” She considers G. Label ideal for women who lead “an active lifestyle but also a real lifestyle. Like me—I work out but I also love to have a tequila drink.”

G. Label also appeals to women who identify with Ms. Paltrow’s role as a working mother. (Her children Moses and Apple are teenagers now). Kyle Polischuk, 50, a Duxbury, Mass., chief human resources officer, first discovered G. Label at the Goop store in London while on a business trip and has since collected pieces from athleisure to an easy summer dress. She immediately took to the brand, in the same way that she gravitates toward designer

Tory Burch’s

eponymous label. To her, both companies incarnate their founders’ busy, sporty, competent lifestyles. She identifies with Ms Paltrow and Ms. Burch in part because they’re in her same demographic. She elaborated, “As women, we go through evolutions as we grow up. If you think about when [Ms. Paltrow] was on the red carpet a lot of that was pre-children, age 20, 30. And you evolve your style as you gain more experience and figure out who you are.”

Some women want to be part of the G. Label tribe, but find that its price point or its size run excludes them. Goop’s Instagram page is rife with comments like “brb gonna go set up a go fund me for a sweatshirt” and “the prices are too high for what it is, and the sizes are too small.” These are not criticisms unique to G. Label, but perhaps are exacerbated by the fact that Goop tries to include everyone through its ample free content. If you’re reading its newsletter, listening to its podcast and watching its

Netflix

show, you want to be able to afford a shirt to live the lifestyle. Goop seems sensitive to the issue. The brand’s Mr. Kearney said, “We’ve made a conscious effort to really broaden our assortment in every line of business. For example we launched in our beauty area our lip balm at a $20 price point, which was one of our most successful products in the history of Goop.”

The recent appointment of Ms. Paltrow to the board of clothing-rental unicorn Rent the Runway indicates that she’s serious about the rag trade. She said that she thinks she was named to the board for her “consumer marketing insights,” but that she felt like the lucky one to be able to learn from co-founder

Jennifer Hyman.

She continued, “I look forward to the board meetings because it’s a masterclass in running a business and it’s really cool.” And yes, she’s been renting clothing from the service and raved that she “loves it.”

Ms. Paltrow, like the very successful Ms. Burch, is in an unusual position as both the face and the CEO of her brand. She has to meet the demand for lip balms, vibrators and affordable-yet-luxurious blazers, all while looking magazine-worthy in her own lookbooks. It’s a tall order. While perusing images of the recent Dior couture show, she realized that her relationship with fashion had changed, was “more wistful.” She said, “Now it’s not, ‘Oh I want to go wear that,’ now it’s more like, ‘Apple would look so good in that,’ or, ‘Maybe we could be inspired by these colors.’”