Gwyneth Paltrow may be the face of (and receive much of the flack for) Goop, but some of the site’s most famous gems — including “conscious upcoupling” and that vaginal steaming piece heard ‘round the world — have stemmed from brainstorming sessions with the company’s head of content, Elise Loehnen.
Loehnen, a media veteran who was formerly the editorial projects director of Condé Nast Traveler and the deputy editor of Lucky, is responsible for making sure all of Goop’s content falls within the brand’s unique niche — a space where the latest holistic and new age trends are often pushed to provocative limits.
“I wanted to be somewhere brave enough to start important conversations, curious enough to explore the weird stuff and low-key enough to celebrate all the beautiful things out there to buy,” Loehnen has said of her decision to hop on board.
After joining Goop in 2014 as the brand’s first editorial director, she was promoted this past September, one month after the company received $15 million in a Series B round led by New Enterprise Associates. Since then, the brand has made headlines for launching its vitamin line (Goop Wellness), partnering with Condé Nast on an upcoming print publication and throwing its first “In Goop Health” summit, a daylong affair involving everything from crystal therapy to aura photography that 600 women paid $500-$1500 to attend.
Needless to say, Loehnen and her fellow “Goopies” have been busy. We asked her to detail a recent day in her life, one that involved the requisite Tracy Anderson class, writing UFO-centric content and brainstorming for Goop’s new video platform.
Gwyneth Paltrow presenting at the In Goop Health summit
5:30 a.m.: I wake up, quietly shoot a Nespresso and head down the hill to Tracy Anderson for a 6 a.m. “MultiTAsk” class.
7:00 a.m.: Sweaty and defeated, I grab another coffee across the parking lot with my pal, Tyler. (Apparently, we can only arrange to see each other at 7 a.m. these days.) Then I head home.
7:20 a.m.: The boys usually wake each other up between 7:00 and 7:30 — except on those wonderful mornings when they wake each other at 5:30. We play in the living room until 8:00, when Vicky, their second-mother-and-the-reason-we’re-all-still-functioning arrives to make them breakfast and get Max changed for school.
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8:00 a.m.: I shower and get dressed, before hopping on a work call at 8:15 from my home office, where there’s a landline (if you can believe it) and peace and quiet. I cut my hair short after Max was born, specifically so that I could get showered and dressed in under 12 minutes. Everyone will know that I have my mornings back when I decide to luxuriate in longer hair.
9:00 a.m.: I give my delicious baby Sam a kiss goodbye before his morning nap and drop Max off at pre-school just down the road. He typically likes to be carried like a little king until we get within striking distance of the gate, and then he’s off to his friends and these wheelbarrows they really like to push around. Two days every month, I work at the school co-op, but alas, it is not my day to cut up snacks and sweep.
9:15 a.m.: I arrive at work and grab a co-worker for a quick catch-up. We walk to our neighborhood canteen, Bondi, for a matcha latte and, if I’m honest, a really good breakfast sandwich.
9:30 a.m.: Goop is growing quickly, and with that comes a pretty constant stream of interviewees. I chat with a candidate for a head of video role, before hopping on a call with my compatriots at Condé Nast to do our weekly lineup run-through for the first edition of Goop magazine, on stands in September.
Elise playing with her kids at home
11:00 a.m.: I write some questions for some upcoming issues — topics include UFOs, intermittent fasting and life insurance 101 — and then hop on the phone with our vice president of marketing to talk through the plan for a big Netflix initiative that we’re working on for their new show Gypsy. Then edit team gathers in Gwyneth’s office so we can run through the next month’s editorial calendar and slot in some special packages (like Lyme disease and PANDAS) that have come up via friends.
12:30 p.m.: I have lunch with Sophia Amoruso, who has become a good friend over the years. We talk about her new media brand, Girlboss, and some partnerships that we might be able to team up on, but she primarily just makes me laugh. She has one of the most singularly brilliant and original marketing minds around.
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2:00 p.m.: We are ramping up our video platform, and so I spend some time working on new franchises to pilot, like “How Goopy Are You?” (Answer: very.)
3:00 p.m.: I work on a board deck, answer some emails and chat with the head merchant working on our annual gift guides, which require many months of market work and coordination between the edit and merchandise teams.
5:45 p.m.: I leave the office to try to make it home by 6:10 for dinner wrap-up and hang time before Sammy goes to bed at 7:00. Max and I eat some Mochi, take a bath, read some books and then look at videos in bed. (He is currently really into cement mixing, rock crushing and the arterial system).
8:00 p.m.: My husband, Rob, and I eat a quick and simple dinner: pizza. And then we settle down in front of the TV with very full glasses of wine, our laptops and “The Leftovers.” (We’re very late to that party.)
10:00 p.m.: Some late-night TV in bed, though I never stay awake past Colbert’s monologue.
