There’s no denying that when it comes to red carpet style, Gossip Girl star Blake Lively is in a league of her own. Never one to shy away from a bold outfit choice or controversial trend, the actress frequently sports Gucci, Versace, and everything in between.
While she’s known to pair Valentino frocks with Louboutin heels, flaunt Chanel and take to the front row in Dior, in a new interview with The Handmaid’s Tale’s Sydney Sweeney, Lively confessed she hasn’t always had access to the calibre of clothing she does now.
While talking to InStyle, Sweeney asked Lively, who is one of her ultimate fashion icons, how she developed relationships with designers. It was then that the 31-year-old actress and mother-of-two confessed that when she initially began walking the red carpet, the majority of what she wore was from American fast fashion retailer Forever 21.
“I wore Forever 21 much longer than I admitted,” said Lively. “I just started saying it was vintage because I was so shamed for it.”
We know for a fact that Lively styles herself, and now we also know why. Sharing that for her, “fashion is a form of self-expression,” the actress told Sweeney that it also forces her out of her comfort zone. “You just want to represent yourself properly, so that’s why I chose to style myself,” she added.
“One of the reasons I’m an actor is that I’m naturally very shy, so it’s liberating to dress up and pretend to be someone else,” said Lively. “The only way that I feel comfortable doing red carpets and interviews is when I adopt the same thing that I do when I’m acting, which is to play a character.”
This explains why Lively wore only suits while promoting her most recent film, A Simple Favor. But irrespective of the reasoning behind her outfits of choice, whatever Lively seems to be doing is most definitely working for her, and global fashion search platform Lyst has the receipts to prove it.
After tracking over 100 million shopping searches from 80 million shoppers in 120 countries, Lyst ranked Lively as 2018’s eighth most influential woman in fashion. The platform analysed the data and discovered that the Ralph Lauren suit Lively wore during the press tour for A Simple Favor, “inspired over 4,000 searches for Ralph Lauren suits the following week.”
Enough said.
