If you follow our celebrity shopping series “What I Can’t Live Without,” you’ll know that famous people are just like us. They light candles to set the mood, use sleep masks to block out light, and are very particular about their sweet treats. At least, that’s what we’ve learned from our conversations with more than 100 famous people throughout 2024. Over the past 12 months, we’ve talked to Emmy Award winners, renowned designers, Olympic medalists, and James Beard recognized chefs — and even checked back in with a few celebs we’ve interviewed in the past, including Steve Aoki, Adam Scott, and Rachel Antonoff. Of course, all of these conversations were special, but a few rose to the top. Here, you’ll find the most popular “What I Can’t Live Without” columns, according to your page views, plus the most popular items from each, according to your purchases, from 2024.
Artist Laila Gohar calls Shout’s stain remover “a sort of miracle remedy for stains,” adding that it’s the reason that she can regularly cook in an all-white outfit. Hundreds of you took her word for it and added it to your carts — making it the most popular item on her list. Also on the cleaning and grooming theme, Gohar’s favorite liquid baby soap and Olaplex hair mask made it into your carts, too.
Christina Ricci’s daily uniform consists of a clean Amazon Essentials Slim-Fit Tank in black “pretty much every single day,” she told us. (This prompted one reader to comment, “I am sincerely delighted by Ms. Ricci taking this opportunity to set the record straight that she wears a CLEAN identical tank every day.”) More than 700 of you followed Ricci’s lead, buying the tank yourselves. Second and third most popular from her list were items Ricci’s used for years: Lancer’s exfoliant and Sebastian’s leave-in conditioner, which she’s been using for eight and 31 years, respectively.
Even chef Alice Waters — the founder of Berkeley’s Chez Panisse and the Edible Schoolyard Project — has burned copper teapots from time to time. Her solution to this problem is Bodum’s Gooseneck Water Kettle, which she says “just happens to be elegant enough that I can have it in my kitchen.” Apparently, you all agreed — and purchased the kettle in droves. You also ordered the face cream she’s been using for 45 years and the throw blanket she prefers over a comforter.
You may have expected Rick Steves’s list to include mostly travel items, but instead he came up with a list of rather delightful and random items, including the toothpicks he uses to spear his food. “Somehow he made eating off a toothpick sound enticing,” one reader commented — and many of you agreed, making it the third-most-popular item on his list. In first and second place were his hummingbird feeder and the Moleskine journals he’s been using for 25 years. “If you’re a travel writer, you’ve got to catch every idea as it flutters by. It’s like netting butterflies, and if I don’t have my little pocket notebook with me, I’ll be jotting these things down on scraps of paper and will lose track of them,” he says.
You may not know comedian Bridget Everett’s dog Lulu, who she describes as “on fire from the minute she wakes up,” but based on how many of you purchased Stashios’ Soother Saucer, it seems like lots of you know a Lulu-type. “Not only does [Lulu] love it, it gives me 20 minutes of quiet and peace. And by the end, really, her battery levels come down about 25 percent,” Everett says. You also all enjoyed the minty mist Everett uses between takes and the tanks she can wear bra-free.
[Editor’s note: Everett’s Girlfriend Collective tank top is no longer available, but the Gemma Scoop Tank is a similar option that’s still available.]
Broad City co-stars Abbi Jacobson and Ilana Glazer — and the reader who called them “my Miralax queens” in the comments — may care about their gut health, but it wasn’t their favorite laxative powder that readers added to their carts. Instead, it was Jacobson’s favorite pen, which she loves because of its 0.3-millimeter thickness. “This pen feels more intentional because of the way that it’s shaped, the tip of it,” she says. “I’ll use it if I’m writing something like a card and I’m not really writing as fast.” Second and third to the pen were Jacobson’s “cheeky and healthy” popcorn that’s “popped by the sun” and Glazer’s “light and fluffy” mineral sunscreen that she applies on herself and her kid. “It’s so thin and goes on so fast, and that makes it easy to apply on a kid that’s running away from you,” Glazer says.
Sydney Sweeney is an evangelist for the TheraFace Pro, the microcurrent skin-care tool that she throws in her bag when she wants to tone and define her face. “It’s really good to use right after you wake up, or I’ll try to use it before red carpets or photo-shoot days,” she adds — and many of you were inspired to try it for yourself. But you didn’t only buy Sweeney’s splurge-y recommendation: You picked up her favorite dessert, too. Sweeney loves KitKat-flavored ice-cream cones, which she says aren’t “the healthiest thing for you, but it makes me happy, so I wanted to share my happiness.” Apparently, many of you wanted a taste of her collaboration with Bai, too.
McKinnon’s list focused on her very favorite practical items, which prompted one reader to comment, “This might be the best Celebrity Shopping ever. I need more random, old, middle-grade witchy book recs out of these things.” The aforementioned “middle-grade witchy book rec” is Monica Furlong’s Wise Child, which was the second-most-popular item on McKinnon’s list. The most purchased item? These Nike socks, which hit at McKinnon’s preferred sock height — right above the ankle. “I can’t mess with the sock falling into the shoe. I don’t have time for that. I don’t think anyone does in this day and age,” she adds. The star’s gluten-free pasta, which finds “has just the best, chewiest texture,” came in a close third.
In the six years since we first asked Joanna Goddard about the items she can’t live without, she’s swapped her “ratty old underwear” and “widow socks” for Jockey string bikinis and Le Bon Shoppe socks. You all followed suit — literally. More than a thousand of you purchased the underwear that Goddard loves. “It’s such a life improvement to start your day without a hassle,” she says, referring to her newly streamlined underwear drawer. (After Goddard recommended the Jockeys, we’ve also crowned them Best in Class in our guide to women’s underwear, too, because they’re that comfortable and breathable.) As for second and third place, Goddard’s favorite kids’ toy and preferred funny book were neck and neck. They fall into the category of “little things around [her] house that you can just pick up,” of which she likes to have many (and now you can, too).
The most popular “What I Can’t Live Without” prompted one reader (and, frankly, all of us) to comment, “Tell us more! More! More!” Jason Schwartzman — who is a true Strategist fan — spent nearly three hours on the phone with Strategist writer Lauren Ro, telling her about his 23 favorite things, many of which you all couldn’t wait to try. Most notably, you were intrigued by the one-person Boggle book that Schwartzman says is “probably one of the most important things in my life.” (In fact, one reader was so inspired by this thing that they commented, “Why have I not made boggle more important in MY life?”) Though Schwartzman has carried around this book for the past four years, he says, “I’ve not found every single word they’re saying exists on that page. The answers are on the back, but I will not look.”
Sadly, the Boggle book has long been out of stock, but Schwartzman’s sets of magnets and fabric markers — second and third most popular on the list, respectively — are still available. If you’d like to use the magnets as Schwartzman does, take note: “I love taking two magnets and pushing them together when they want to repel each other and seeing how close they can get before they flip and suck onto each other,” he told us. On the other hand, he uses the fabric markers to tackle stains. “If something is stained, what I do is I will take my fabric markers and draw all over the stain or write words or something,” he says. “Then no one sees the stain, and you can keep the piece of clothing, and it has a second life.” Perhaps we can all agree with one reader who says, “His palpable enjoyment in sharing these items’ place in his life in such entertaining detail makes it an all-time favorite for me.”
The Strategist is designed to surface useful, expert recommendations for things to buy across the vast e-commerce landscape. Every product is independently selected by our team of editors, whom you can read about here. We update links when possible, but note that deals can expire and all prices are subject to change.
