Everybody’s getting into the lifestyle magazine business, from sleazy real estate scam artists all the way up to Hollywood royalty like Gwyneth Paltrow, so it’s no wonder that Stephen Colbert is trying to jump on the gravy train. As it happens, the late night host is well positioned to make the move to print, having established his own personal lifestyle brand, “Covetton House,” all the way back in 2015.
As a brand, Covetton House stands for many things—indulgence, luxury, indulgent luxury, the transfer of wealth to Stephen Colbert, luxurious indulgence—but above all, it’s always stood for making fun of Goop. The print version, Covetton Cuarterly, is no exception, taking its cue from Goop magazine, the brand new paper form of the website that once recommended spending $950 on toilet paper. (Colbert: “For that price, you could just wipe your butt with money, but then Gwyneth Paltrow wouldn’t have your money.”) Goop put Gwyneth in a mud bath on its first cover, so Covetton Cuarterly has an unforgettable picture of—well, let’s let Colbert describe it:
The premiere issue features me enjoying a luxurious nacho cheese soak. I discovered its exfoliating properties after passing out under the pump dispenser at the skybox of Yankee Stadium.
There’s always room for more jokes about Goop’s hilarious approach to sex, and Colbert is so delighted to hawk Covetton Cuarterly stories about “scrotal dry cleaning” and “vaginal wash-and-fold” that he has to hide his face behind the magazine until he recovers his composure. But nothing quite reaches the linguistic heights of this testimonial from the original Covetton House segment:
Covetton was created for you, because we want you to want the things that we are wont to want you to want. That’s why our motto at Covetton is … “WANT.”
So the Covetton Cuarterly segment expands the Covetton House brand while simultaneously watering down the highly-concentrated crazy that made it distinctive to begin with. Just how far is Colbert going with his Goop parody?
Here’s the original Covetton House segment:
