Your coutroom, Gwyneth Paltrow's catwalk. Goop? More like drip! Okay, here's where I normally would say, "Jokes aside, there's an actual court case here" but, given the bizarre nature of Paltrow's ski trial, which she won on March 30, the only reliable constant we can actually cling is her deliciously indulgent outfits.
The circumstances of this case are inherently wild.
Terry Sanderson, a retired optometrist, sued Gwyneth Paltrow in a Utah courtroom over a 2016 incident that occurred at Park City Mountain Resort. septuagenarian Sanderson purported that Paltrow crashed into him while skiing, causing him long-term wounding. Already off to a strange start, as you can see.
The exact details were hashed out during the trial — Sanderson asserted that Paltrow plowed into him, causing damage like "permanent traumatic brain injury" and broken ribs while Paltrow retorted that Sanderson actually hit her and is fabricating his own harm — but the only objective truth is that, between the fumbling, chatty lawyers and insane recreations, this lawsuit was fully bananas.
For instance, at one point, engineering experts were brought in to doodle stick figures showcasing the moments of impact. Notice that their caricature of the victim is smiling for no discernable reason.
Meanwhile, throughout the entire trial, as reliable as a rock in a storm, Gwyneth Paltrow has been flexing the sort of incredibly stylish and outrageously expensive outfits you'd expect of, say, the Olsen sisters.
In fact, Paltrow indeed wore plenty of clothes from the Olsens' label, The Row, including a coat and turtleneck sweater worth about $3,500 and $1,700, respectively, and they certainly look as lavish as they cost.
Far be it for me to tacitly support Gwyneth Paltrow here, by the way.
I don't have any particular love for her — on one hand, she's excellent in The Royal Tenenbaums, on the other, terrible politics — and I genuinely dislike Goop, her company.
Not only did Paltrow's Goop make big bucks by being a rather exclusionary lifestyle label (how else could she afford all this luxury clothing?) but she did so while frequently peddling medical misinformation all the while.
However, sometimes you gotta call a spade a spade and a fit a fit and it simply must be said that Gwyneth Paltrow got off some huge courtroom fits.
We're talking full Prada, classic Céline bags — Céline with the accent, thanks very much — and, yes, lots of The Row in what may be the ultimate display of not-so-stealth-wealth courtroom flexing.
And, as you can tell from her confident stride, Gwyneth Paltrow knows what she's doing, which makes me want to dislike her looks on pure principle but, sorry, I can't.
Gwyneth is simply dressing. Sue me! (Please don't)
This could've been part of Paltrow's bigger strategy, mind you. These statement looks are terribly reminiscent of the head-to-toe designer clothes that Winona Ryder wore to her own trial over 20 years ago.
The difference is that while Ryder opted for more youthful clothes seemingly selected to heighten her apparent naivety (and thus elicit sympathy from the jury), Paltrow wore clothes that made her seem strong, confident, assured in her every move.
Again, to be clear, I'm not picking a winner in this trial. I haven't heard all of the arguments or points and don't have a horse in this race, so I won't be offering any platitudes to Paltrow for winning.
However, I do feel comfortable saying that the lawyers made quite a mess of things.
That's one of the craziest parts of this entire affair: despite Gwyneth Paltrow's wild outfits, they were merely one of the many strange elements that made otherwise trivial trial quite memorable.
