On Sunday, as many of her peers were in Los Angeles preparing for the Emmy Awards, Gwyneth Paltrow was in New York introducing GWYN, the reincarnation of her Goop fashion collection G Label, to the world. It was her first time at New York Fashion Week as a founder, not a front row-er — and a signal that this time she was serious.
Generally, when celebrities start a fashion line and want to prove their design bona fides and win industry acceptance, they go one of two ways.
They can do an Olsen, which is to say hide in the background and try to downplay their presence, and thus their fame, as much as possible (which in an inverse way serves to emphasize it).
Or they can do a Beckham: humble themselves before the gatekeepers by getting up close and personal and explaining it all, as if they had been pinning fabric in the studio until late the night before.
Ms. Paltrow chose a third, more signature — even performative — way.
She invited everyone into an apartment (actually a lighting showroom set up to look like an apartment), which she had accessorized to look as if it were her apartment. In the dining room a long table covered with a peach tablecloth was set with Goop-approved nibbles: slices of thin pink prosciutto; a selection of homemade-looking seed and nut bars; even a plate piled with bright yellow mini squash and emerald zucchini with the brand logo, GWYN, carved in the sides in a brand-type font.
In the living room, a family photo of Ms. Paltrow as a child with her parents, the director Bruce Paltrow and the actress Blythe Danner, rested on a side table. There was a rack hung with cotton dry-cleaning bags to suggest that Ms. Paltrow had just picked up her dry cleaning (because who doesn’t hang their dry cleaning in their living room?) and scented candles. In an anteroom, a tarot card reader sat by a table strewed with crystals in case anyone was interested.
As for Ms. Paltrow herself, she was tucked away in another room, with the racks of GWYN and its designer, Sofía Menassé, who came to Goop from Maison Margiela, where she had worked under John Galliano. Not that the clothes on display had much of a Galliano vibe. Rather, they had more of a Paltrow vibe, which is sort of an old Jil Sander-meets-Theory vibe, in classic shades of navy, slate gray, black, white and camel. Ms. Paltrow and Ms. Menassé had been working on the rebrand for a year, Ms. Paltrow said.
“When I did the first G Label collection, which was tiny, I couldn’t use Goop at all because of a trademark issue,” she explained. “So I had to quickly think of a different name. G Label was something we just picked quickly, and it has never felt that connected to me or that emotional.” GWYN, on the other hand, was her. (Hence the apartment scenario.) Or at least was supposed to be more her.
When she and Ms. Menassé are talking about the collection, Ms. Paltrow said, “I think, selfishly, a lot about myself. Like, where am I going? What do I want to wear? In May it’s like, ‘Oh, there’s a lot of business conferences, or there’s art shows, or there’s graduations.’”
Also, “I’m not a huge polka-dot person, so it stays pretty true to what I wear.”
As she spoke, Ms. Paltrow was wearing a dark gray GWYN sleeveless dress with a scoop neck, a fitted top and a mid-calf pleated skirt with a dropped waist. Ms. Menassé was wearing a long black GWYN A-line coat (or coat dress or coat worn as dress) that buttoned to the neck with a little collar. Also in the collection: a neat pea coat, cashmere tank tops and sweaters, some lush wide wale corduroys, a leather pencil skirt.
The clothes, which are made primarily in Italy, range from $395 to about $1,300 and will be available on the Goop website and in Goop stores on Sept. 21.
So would she have a runway show in the future? Ms. Paltrow initially demurred. Then she and Ms. Menassé looked at each other and together said, “Never say never.”
As for how big she wants GWYN to be, Ms. Paltrow said, “I don’t really think about things in those terms.” However, she went on: “I think we do something pretty modern in that we make really delicious food and we make cashmere sweaters. I guess Ralph Lauren does that too.”
“We’re sort of picking up where they leave off,” she added.
Vanessa Friedman has been the fashion director and chief fashion critic for The Times since 2014.
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