Gwyneth Paltrow’s Guide to Everyday Skin Care and Wellness

Gwyneth Paltrow shares her essentials-only approach to beauty and wellness.

Gwyneth Paltrow’s Guide to Everyday Skin Care and Wellness

If you thought that Gwyneth Paltrow’s natural glow was born of a secretly overwrought routine, you’d be mistaken. The actor turned wellness and beauty entrepreneur enjoys a surprisingly laissez-faire regimen for one so successful in the space—but perhaps that’s the point. “I believe that beauty and wellness are inextricably linked,” says Paltrow, who starts her day with a protein-infused smoothie and a bout of transcendental meditation. Next comes a bit of dry brushing, the bristles pulled in gentle, practiced strokes toward Paltrow’s heart as she espouses its benefits of circulation and exfoliation. A self-described “massive exfoliating junky,” the Goop creator proves her point with a daub of Goopglow Microderm Instant Glow Exfoliator rubbed over cheeks, with renewed skin given a glaze of Vintner’s Daughter Active Botanical Serum. “It’s incredible to know that there are clean, nontoxic products that are really efficacious and really work wonders on your skin,” says Paltrow, who first entered the skin-care space due to her desire for clean, luxurious, and accessible beauty. “I was not a person who ever had a skin-care routine as a teenager. My daughter does, but I was very much a tomboy, so this whole skin-care thing has come to me later in life,” explains Paltrow, pressing on an eye mask and pulling Jillian Dempsey’s Gold Sculpting Bar over the area.

Cult-favored Weleda Skin Food teams with a surprisingly minimal touch of sunscreen and a sheen of Goopglow Glow Lotion, rounding out Paltrow’s a.m. skin-care groove. A barely there pressing of Westman Atelier concealer obscures any undereye darkness, while Paltrow mainstay Olio E Osso lip and cheek tinted Balm furnishes cheeks and lips with a sheer pop of peony. “My daughter is very into the beauty world,” says Paltrow, who counts mascara (by Kosas) and lip balm (by Goopgenes) as her makeup essentials. “I mean, she knows how to contour—that girl is just on fire with her routine. I don’t know where she got it from, but she definitely did not get it from me; I can barely put on concealer as you just saw.”

Paltrow’s iconic appeal has something to do with this sort of honesty about who she is—a luxury she wants every woman to enjoy. “When we started Goop from the content perspective, we really wanted to challenge social norms that existed around silencing women, encouraging women not to ask difficult questions, and things that really kept shame over people. So we go there. We like to talk about things, open it up. We really want to eliminate shame,” says Paltrow, whose last step is a swipe of Ilia lip gloss. “We really believe that women are the most powerful, beautiful creatures on earth. And the closer that we are to ourselves, the better off we all are.”