Before today, the only fashion shoot Gwyneth Paltrow and Apple Martin co-starred in was for the actor’s brand Goop, photographed on an iPhone by her husband, Brad Falchuk, during Covid lockdown. (“I mean, it doesn’t really count,” Paltrow says.) But now, the mother-daughter duo are trading Goop for Gap.
The pair stepped in front of Mario Sorrenti’s camera for the GapStudio fall 2025 campaign. “I was freaking out,” Martin says. “I idolize him so much, so I was so nervous.” Paltrow decrees that her 21-year-old daughter was a natural. “I was so impressed by how she seemed to already know how to be in front of the camera,” Paltrow says. “It was so natural and it was exciting to see how excited Mario Sorrenti was about her. That was my favorite part.” Martin giggles. “I was trying my best!” she says. “Mom, I’m happy you approved of my work.”
Paltrow and Zac Posen, Gap’s creative director, have a longer history than most. “My best friend from seventh grade on was his publicist back in the day,” she says. While she and Posen have been pals for decades, it was Sorrenti’s involvement in the campaign that sold Paltrow and Martin on stepping in front of the lens together for the very first time. “I guess I’m old school,” she says. “It really matters to me who the photographer is and their point of view. So I thought if Mario was going to shoot our first ever portrait, that’s pretty exciting.” Martin—a self-described fashion obsessive who has “been wearing Gap since I was born, probably”—was excited to pose for a brand with such a rich legacy. “I feel like it’s such a classic American cool vibe,” she says.
The pair can add their GapStudio campaign shoot to their list of unique mother-daughter activities. Among them? Sifting through Paltrow’s formidable fashion archive—including her many Oscar dresses. “She pulls all kinds of stuff. She’s very into all my ’90s Calvin, of which there’s a lot—and the ’90s Prada, of which there’s a lot,” Paltrow says. “Sometimes we just play dress up and she’ll put on my Oscar dresses and stuff like that. We have fun down there.” While Martin has yet to try on the famous pink Ralph Lauren dress that Paltrow wore when she took home her Academy Award for Shakespeare in Love, she has tried on the alternate that the brand sent over: a bubblegum skirt and a pink bra top.
It’s no wonder Martin is still plumbing the depths of her mother’s wardrobe. “Weirdly, I started saving clothes for Apple about 15, 20 years before she was born,” Paltrow says. “I don’t just see a top, I’ll see a moment in my life and all the circumstances surrounding it. I’ve always saved everything in hopes that I had a daughter one day who would want to go in there.” Luckily for both, Martin is very keen to raid her mom’s closet—particularly in the footwear department. “Her shoes are ridiculous except sometimes they don’t fit,” Martin says. “I have large feet, which is kind of sad, but the pairs that I can fit into, I take all of them.” Her current fixation? A pair of Prada kitten heels that she describes as “edgy and cool.”
Martin considers her mother one of her reigning style influences. “She’s such a badass when it comes to fashion and has just done what she wants and doesn’t really care,” she says. “I feel like I’m finally getting to the place where I don’t really care what people think. She influenced me.” Paltrow, for her part, had her own influences. “I remember being a young woman and seeing people like Lauren Hutton and Anjelica Huston who had a very strong masculine-feminine intersectional vibe,” she says. “These women really dress like themselves. They’re not trying to squeeze themselves into another image for anybody. I think I’ve followed along those lines.”
