Sometimes a launch feels less like a product drop and more like a full circle. That is how Byrdie writer Sophie Vilensky frames her phone call with Gwyneth Paltrow about Goop’s newest moisturizer — and the story behind it starts four years earlier, with a crystal, a ribbon, and a job Vilensky did not get.
Four years ago, on that very day, Vilensky buried a crystal she had tied Goop’s logo around with a ribbon, an offering to the universe to support her getting a job at the company. She did not get the job. But she ended up where she was supposed to be anyway, because that week she got on the phone with Paltrow to talk about her beauty brand’s latest launch. Sometimes things do not work out the way you think they will, Vilensky writes — but they do work out.
There is another twist Vilensky cannot resist. Science says she has been losing roughly one percent of her collagen each year since that maybe-fateful day, but you would not know it: Goop’s new Youth-Boost NAD+ Peptide Rich Cream harnesses the regenerative potential of coenzyme NAD+ to address firmness, elasticity, texture, skin tone, wrinkles and more. “Skin-wise I can still be 24, working with GP,” she writes. “And that’s what matters, right? The universe really does listen.” Paltrow herself, she adds, is the same icon she was then — thanks to the universe and good skincare, made even better by the rich new cutting-edge moisturizer, which launched on Monday, January 26.
Byrdie’s series The One Thing is a short, intimate peek into the products, rituals and moments celebrities swear by — their go-tos, must-haves and can’t-live-withouts. In this installment, Paltrow talks through the cream that started it all, her winter skin swaps, the product that lives in every bag she owns, her mornings, her evenings, and the two traits that make her such a Libra.
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The One Thing That Inspired the New Moisturizer
The cream started with a conversation. Paltrow was working with Thira, Goop’s product developer, talking about next-generation compounds, when Thira asked whether she would ever want to upgrade the All-in-One Moisturizer. “Not really, it’s my favorite,” Paltrow said — you get too attached to a moisturizer.
But Thira had something new to show her: NAD, a next-generation molecule that we already have in our bodies. Paltrow says she has been injecting NAD herself and calls it a great longevity tool. What it does inside the body, she explains, it does for the skin too — it rejuvenates. So they built the new cream around it, loading the All-in-One Moisturizer with a huge amount of extra peptides and NAD. And the results, she says, are crazy.
The One Thing She Loves Most About It
What Paltrow loves most is how the cream works with the peptide serum. It is like having an incredible stack of peptides, she says, and then more peptides and NAD in the cream on top. The two work together as a dual system — and the results are incredible.
The cream at the center of it is the Goop Youth-Boost NAD+ Peptide Rich Cream, a 50 mL jar designed to pair with the Youth-Boost Peptide Serum.
What Healthy Skin Means to Her
For Paltrow, healthy skin is not about perfection. It is the best version of your most beautiful, glowing, vibrant skin at your age, she says — not flawless, not taut with no freckles. It is about the beautiful you that shines through, and looking its absolute best and most vibrant. Healthy skin is what makes you glow, and the point is to let that shine through and enhance it.
The One Winter Skincare Swap She Makes
Paltrow has always had dry skin, but perimenopause has made it about ten times more dry. In winter, when the heat is on or when she is flying, she reaches for the same thing every time: the Goop Fix and Restore Balm, which she calls really, deeply hydrating.
Her order of operations stays the same — skincare, then face oil, then moisturizer, with Fix and Restore layered on top of it all. On a plane, she sometimes goes further, putting a thick layer of the balm on with oils on top.
The One Product That’s Always In Her Bag
Ask Paltrow what never leaves her side and the answer is immediate: the Goop lip balm. She has tubes of it in every pocket, every purse, and in the car, and she goes through so many of them. She uses them down to the very last bit — scraping the remainder out with her fingernail.
The One Wellness Practice She’s Obsessed With Right Now
Paltrow says she has mostly been sticking to her regular routine, but she has added one new practice: a meditation for calming the nervous system, which she now does every day and finds really helpful. It is built around trying to re-regulate cortisol, and what fascinates her is the intersection between how you feel about things and your physiological reaction. At its core, she says, it is about soothing yourself using the breath and using your inner thoughts.
The One Wellness Treatment She’s Been Aching to Try
There is one treatment Paltrow has not tried yet, and she wants to: a Japanese or Korean head spa. She has never done one, she says, and they just look so good. Does that count, she asks — because it absolutely does.
How She Beats the “Winter Uglies”
First, Paltrow wants to know what the phrase even means. Then she answers it in her own way: what she really loves to do in winter is go deeper — moving things through with dry brushing and sauna-ing, getting the skin feeling supple and moving toxins out of the body.
In summer, when it is hot, you are less inclined to climb into a hot sauna. In winter, she says, it is a nice thing to do, and there are sauna places all over. The health data around sauna, she says, is astonishing: at a certain frequency per week, at a certain temperature, you can reduce all-cause mortality by 30 or 40 percent. She has been doing it for a while now — and this winter, she says, she is “double doubling down.”
The One Recent “Boyfriend Breakfast” She’s Still Thinking About
The breakfast Paltrow keeps thinking about started in her garden: a beautiful bulb of fennel, and then some onions. She turned them into a caramelized fennel and onion jam, and put it on a sandwich with fried eggs and a patty sausage. She does not love meat, she admits — but her husband loves meat, so she made a chorizo patty sausage. He was very happy.
The One Book She’s Currently Recommending
The book Paltrow just finished and loved is Among Friends. It is about two guys who have been best friends since boarding school — handsome, charismatic guys who grow up, get married, and each have a daughter. One weekend, the two little families go to one of their country houses, and then something happens there that sort of breaks everything apart. It is, she says, really interesting.
The One Routine That Starts Her Day
The first thing Paltrow does in the morning when she wakes up is tongue scraping and oil pulling. While the oil is in her mouth, she turns on the coffee, checks her texts, and makes sure her kids are okay. Then she has coffee with her husband and reads the news a bit — although she has been trying not to do that so much lately.
She starts working, and then exercises within the first couple of hours of getting up: a Tracy Anderson routine, or heavy pilates, like Lagree pilates, the kind they have at SLT. Then she showers, does her skincare, and gets on with the day.
The One Routine That Ends Her Day
Evenings run on a simple rule: dinner early, so she does not go to bed on a full stomach, because she really thinks that impacts sleep. After dinner she walks the dog — she always tries to use up glucose in the blood after eating, with the dishes, walking the dog, that kind of thing. Then she takes a bath, with whatever bath salts and oils suit the night. And then she gets into bed. That is kind of it.
The One—Actually Two “in Equal Measure” (So Libra)—Ways She Identifies With Her Sign
Ask Paltrow how she identifies with being a Libra and she gives you two answers, in equal measure. The first is that Libras are always seeking beauty — and she says she is absolutely defined by that. Beauty in a wide sense, but also in a narrow sense: beauty in a walk outside, beauty in how she puts the dishes on the table, beauty in poetry, in walking through a museum.
The second is that she is ruled by justice, the scales. “Is this fair? Is this not fair?” she asks. “Yeah, those are the two. That’s a Libra for you.”
The through-line of the whole conversation is balance: a new cream built on a molecule the body already knows, a winter routine built on layers of moisture, a meditation built on breath, and a sign built on beauty and fairness in equal measure. Paltrow’s version of winter is not about fighting the season — it is about going deeper into it, one sauna, one early dinner, one swipe of lip balm at a time.
