Living a Goop-approved lifestyle isn’t as intimidating as it sounds.
Laurie Trott, the publisher’s fashion director, overseeing what clothes are featured and sold on the Gwyneth Paltrow-owned lifestyle website, insists balance is the key ingredient when her team of three look for Goop-worthy brands.
“The fashion is something special to Goop,” she said. “We strive to create a mix of clothes that you can wear the pieces for more than a season and in multiple ways.”
Trott, who has two decades experience at publications like Lucky and Elle, joined Goop a year and a half ago. While Goop’s reach is smaller compared to her previous stints — Goop.com attracted just 1.2 million U.S. visitors last month, according to data from comScore — working for the content and e-commerce publisher is a welcomed change of pace.
“Here, you’re functioning in less of a bubble in terms of what you’re creating,” Trott said. “It feels like more of a complete solution. If you’re only in editorial, you’re not offering a concrete solution because you can only show people what to buy, but not giving them direct access. What Goop does is create that bridge.”
And, yes, Goop herself, a.k.a. Ms. Paltrow, is at Goop’s Los Angeles offices every day. “She’s truly a visionary,” Trott said, adding that she’s “so great to work with.”
Here’s a diary of a recent day in Trott’s life, slightly edited for clarity and length:
5:30 a.m.: Ambitious, I know. I keep hitting snooze for half an hour.
6:00 a.m.: Ok, I am up. I make a strong pot of coffee and walk the dog. I’m obsessed with the steps counter on my iPhone, and I try to get in 5,000 before the day really starts. It doesn’t sound like much but in Los Angeles, it takes a lot of work. Back at home, I start checking emails. Since I’m three hours behind New York, emails start rolling in around then. I also check all my go to sites for news: WWD, The New York Times, and New York Magazine.
7:00 a.m.: I catch a pilates reformer class at the studio in my neighborhood. It feels brutally early to be doing any exercise but it actually clears my head and helps me stay focused throughout the day.
9:00 a.m.: I have a holiday collection preview with the publicist from 3.1 Phillip Lim, who is town for a few days. My job entails straddling both the editorial coverage and the merchandising team at Goop, so appointments like these are double duty. Phillip Lim is one of our Goop shop favorites and it’s always helpful to see a collection in person as opposed to just photos. More and more fashion people are moving to L.A. but the majority are still based in N.Y. so a lot of the meetings I do are around when they come to town.
11:00 a.m.: I drive downtown to a few showroom appointments. Since L.A. is so spread out, it can become tricky to schedule meetings without losing a lot of time driving. One is with a new collection that we recently started working with, St. Roche. I found the collection through Instagram, which is where I pretty much get all my fashion news. It’s always exciting to discover a new brand, and I like supporting small companies that are just starting out.
1:00 p.m.: I am at my desk at our L.A. office, across town, answering emails and starting to view the Resort 2017 collections that are being posted on Vogue.com. We get a lot of emails from clothing and accessories collections about potentially being picked up for the Goop shop. Whenever it’s a good fit, we ask for samples to be sent for review, or for the designer to come and do a “desk side.” That’s where they bring some of the items to show us in person.
2:00 p.m.: I meet with our photo editor and fashion assistant about planning the upcoming shoot for our digital shop. We go over our shot list, how the day will be broken up and potential models. We shoot a few days each month, usually in L.A. We constantly have new merchandise being uploaded to the shop on the site, so the timing has to be planned out.
Last week we wrapped our swim shop, which will live on the site throughout the summer. We have small team of merchandisers that work closely with Gwyneth to make sure that each shop offers a clear, tight edit of the best items out there. We are really attentive about our shoots. Since the shop is our global storefront, we need to make every picture count.
3:00 p.m.: Back at my desk, I speak with our senior editor, Kate Wolfson, about some upcoming stories we are working on. Kate and I work very closely, as she does a lot of the writing to support the shopping stories. One of the pillars of Goop editorial are the travel guides. We do a lot of packing stories to support these, and right now I am in the midst of preparing one for the upcoming Thursday newsletter.
3:30 p.m.: I meet with the fashion buyer, planner and head merchandiser regarding our fall theme shops. We led the trend of contextual commerce at Goop, and so the editorial stories and shopping section of the site are deeply interwoven. I work with our team to make sure that the merchandise buy makes sense with the editorial stories that we want to tell, and what gaps we need to fill to do this. We talk about some brands that we want to bring on and what progress has been made.
4:00 p.m.: A super quick meeting with Gwyneth to review the direction for an upcoming shoot, some clothing selections for an editorial story, and fabric swatches for an exclusive designer collaboration to be announced soon.
6:00 p.m.: I catch up on work from home for a few hours, researching items for upcoming shopping stories that need to be prepared for the following week.
8:30 p.m.: Dinner time! I’ve been cooking from Gwyneth’s new cookbook, “It’s All Easy,” and tonight I am making Asian Steamed Halibut in parchment paper. I really love her cookbooks. I was a big fan long before I worked at Goop. While it’s a bad habit, I eat in front of the television and catch up on the last few episodes of “Veep.”
10:00 p.m.: I wash my face (Tata Harper from the Goop shop), finish with Goop by Juice Beauty’s replenishing night cream and get ready for bed. I didn’t know much about clean beauty products before I joined Goop, but now I recognize how important it is to use products that are free of all those crazy chemicals.
10:30 p.m.: In bed! I know it’s a total no-no to engage with tech before you go to sleep but for me, it’s how I wind down. I do one last quick scan of news websites, then catch up on the most recent issue of The New Yorker. That last one is the print version and it puts me gently to sleep.
