Gwyneth Paltrow stirred up a whole lot of buzz with her now-famous “vagina candle.” And now, she’s clapping back with a pretty blunt three-word comeback.
She’s not sorry at all about launching the $75 candle on her Goop site. It blew up online back in 2020 and had a very simple label: “This Smells Like my Vagina.”
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Yep, that’s what it said, plain as day.
Gwyneth shares how the whole thing got started
She recently opened up about the whole situation at the 2025 Mindvalley Manifesting Summit in L.A. Someone asked about the candle and her response was… well, it included some unfiltered language.
Giggling, she said, “You know that product is so fascinating because we were messing around with different scents one day, and I smelled something and I was like, ‘Oh, that smells like… You know.'”
It was just a joke, until it wasn’t
She went on to explain how it all started with perfumer Douglas Little. It was never meant to be real, at least not at first.
“I was joking,” she continued. “And then he [Douglas] was like, ‘Oh we should make that a candle and put it on the site.’ And I thought he was kidding and I was like, ‘yeah, definitely. That sounds like a winner right there,'” she said sarcastically.
Then suddenly, it was up on the site. “All of a sudden, it was literally on the website,” she laughed.
The internet completely lost it
“And then we broke the internet, again. And then it took us a long time to live that one down,” she added.
She kept selling it even when people got mad
Even after the backlash, Gwyneth didn’t take it down. She decided to leave it on Goop and even added more products to the collection.
“I kept it on the site because there is an aspect to women’s sexuality that I think we’re socialized to feel a lot of shame and I sort of loved this kind of punk rock idea.”
She had a message for the critics
She stood by it, no apologies.
“We are beautiful and we are awesome”, she added, and, in response to the haters, she concluded: “Go f*** yourself.”
What was actually in the candle
The candle isn’t available anymore, but while it was, it had a pretty interesting scent blend.
It included geranium, citrus bergamot, cedar, Damask rose, and ambrette seed. And now? It’s going for hundreds on resale sites, according to Page Six.
More candles followed, and they were just as bold
After the success of the original candle, she released more cheeky versions with messages meant to empower women.
There was ‘This Smells Like my Orgasm’ and ‘This Smells Like My Prenup.’ Then in 2022, after Roe v. Wade was overturned, she launched ‘Hands Off My Vagina.’
She tied the products to a bigger cause
Gwyneth and Goop didn’t just stop at shock value. They also used the platform to support something bigger.
For every ‘Hands Off My Vagina’ candle sold, the company donated $25 to the ACLU Foundation’s Reproductive Freedom Project.
Some stars just couldn’t get enough of the scent
Apparently, Elton John went wild for the vag candle. According to Heretic perfumer Douglas Little, who co-created it with Gwyneth, the music legend bought “a ton” of them.
“Like a lot. Like, a lot a lot. He’s a fan,” Little told The Cut.
He also said people were basically stalking them to try to get one. At one point, someone was even reselling it on eBay for a ridiculous price.
As for the actual scent? He said they went for something sensual, provocative, and fun — not something that literally smelled like Gwyneth.
“Just saying the word — vagina! — is shocking to some people,” he added. “Why the f*** is that? There’s no reason. It’s this beautiful, sacred thing and yet in our society and in many societies there is a lot of stigma and shame. I think people are sick of that.”