It started with Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop – now everyone from Zooey Deschanel and Reese Witherspoon to Lena Dunham is selling you their way of life
If you crave the advice of a woman just like you, except with bigger hair, newer jokes and far, far more money, then this is your time. Revel. Revel in the ever-multiplying number of celebrities who are now not just actors, not just writers, directors, models, producers, but also lifestyle brands. Walking in the perfumed footsteps of Gwyneth Paltrow – whose Goop website and newsletter provided such opportunities for gleeful despair as mugwort vaginal steaming and the famed “winter detox” (“Keep your socks on in the house”) – we now have Blake Lively and Reese Witherspoon, who have both launched lifestyle brands in the past year. And in the past month Lena Dunham and supermodel Karlie Kloss have joined them. The main thing they have in common? They need you.
Adopting a celebrity version of marching around the playground chanting: “Who wants to be in my gang?”, today’s stars aren’t content with creating their own lingerie line or perfume with top notes of “I’m getting to the age where Hollywood starts casting me as my boyfriend’s mother” – they want to wrestle back power one muesli recipe at a time. Where celebrities used to sell products, today they are the product. They are a walking advert for themselves – for the books they read, the superfoods they eat. They are a well-packaged bundle of values and advice. We trust them. If they say we’ll enjoy aerial yoga, or banana bread, or love itself, well… we’ll give it a try.
Continue reading...