Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop MRKT Pop-Up Lands in Toronto

Gwyneth Paltrow’s influential lifestyle brand started shipping its conversation-starting, highly curated mix of wellness, fashion, and lifestyle products to Canada just last year. The first international “In Goop Health” summit took place in Vancouver in November. And now, the first Canadian Goop MRKT pop-up has opened in Toronto for the summer, inside Yorkville’s Hazelton Hotel.

While the 1,300-square-foot MRKT space doesn’t represent the first time Canadians can shop for Gwyneth-approved wardrobe staples and beauty elixirs in person—Pop-In@Nordstrom briefly hosted the brand at its Vancouver and Toronto stores in 2017—it’s certainly the most immersive way to experience the Goop lifestyle IRL. Beyond offering the brand’s must-have products across the fashion, home, beauty, and wellness categories, the Toronto shop will be hosting a number of special programs, including no-makeup makeup master classes with Beautycounter and an ear seeding event with practitioner Deganit Nuur.

The Yabu Pushelberg-designed pop-up uses materials such as untreated wood and raw canvas backdrops to capture the city’s connection to the Toronto film festival.

“For us, [the pop-ups are] really not just audience development in the sense of exposing people to the brand, but about really exposing them to the brand where they can touch and feel it, and get an idea of what we’re doing and what we’re about,” says Elise Loehnen, Goop chief content officer.

The Yabu Pushelberg–designed boutique is light-filled and airy, reflecting the area’s Toronto International Film Festival connection through the use of film set–inspired materials such as untreated wood and raw canvas backdrops. The decor and layout, by design, differs from that of Goop’s permanent stores and other pop-ups. “When we go about doing a permanent store or a pop-up or really any event, they’re not pop-ups-in-a-box, where we roll into a city and this is what we do and it’s always the same,” says Loehnen. “We try to figure out what makes sense for not only every specific city, but our retail team really thinks about the neighbourhood it’s in.”

Stasher sandwich bags, high-end Kegel trainers, fine jewellery by Foundrae, and clean beauty favourites are all found in one space.

So, what products can you expect to find at Goop MRKT in Toronto? “Goop is about essentials, which is our own collection and then discovery brands,” says Loehnen. “Our goal is always to have the things that other people don’t have, or haven’t found yet.” In the Toronto store, this translates to G. Label and G. Sport separates mixed in with everything from Smythe blazers to colourful pieces from a collaboration with Milanese label La DoubleJ to Birkenstocks—and that’s just in the fashion section.

The pop-up carries colourful pieces from Milanese label La DoubleJ.

Shopping at Goop is an unusual experience because what’s considered on-brand is luxurious and aspirational, but also strangely relatable in its eclectic variety and hyper-specificity. There aren’t many other places in swanky Yorkville where you can pick up $12 Stasher sandwich bags and high-end Kegel trainers as well as fine jewellery by Foundrae and clean beauty favourites from Tata Harper and Kosas.

You’ll have to order your jade egg online, though.

The exterior of the pop-up on Yorkville Avenue in Toronto.

Goop MRKT is open through September 22 at 118 Yorkville Avenue in Toronto.

Photos by Adrian Gaut.

_________

Never miss a story. Sign up for NUVO’s weekly newsletter, here.