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Blake Lively Dives Into Her Life in Looks—From Gossip Girl to the Met Gala

“I don’t work with a stylist, I never have,” the star tells Vogue.
Director: Posy Dixon    
DP: Mike Lopez    
Editor: Phil Ceconi, Michael Suyeda
Producer: Nicola Pardy
Assistant Camera: Ian Havens    
Audio: Sean Paulsen    
Gaffer: Zane Shaffer    
Associate Producers: Krissy Engelson, Qieara Lesesne
Production Assistant: Lea Donenberg     
Set Designer: Taylor Horne       
Prop Stylist: Javi Scalley 
Hair Stylist: Jennifer Yepez
Makeup Stylist: Kris Buckle
Nail Stylist: Elle Gerstein
Covid Supervisor: Jodi Katzman
Production Coordinator: Jane DiBartolo
Production Manager: Victor Cifrè II
Production Manager: Kit Fogarty
Assistant Editors:
Justin Symonds, JC Scruggs, Andy Morell, Billy Ward & Cory Stevens
Post Production Coordinator: Andrea Farr
Post-Production Supervisor: Marco Glinbizzi
Filmed on location: The Greenwich Hotel
Entertainment Director, Vogue: Sergio Kletnoy
Director of Content Production, Vogue: Rahel Gebreyes
Executive Producer: Ruhiya Nuruddin
Manager, Creative Development: Alexandra Gurvitch
Director, Creative Development: Anna Page Nadin
Senior Director, Programming, Vogue: Linda Gittleson
VP, Digital Video Programming and Development, Vogue: Joe Pickard

Released on 05/09/2022

Transcript

Blake Lively, amazing or apocalyptic.

So I gotta look up that writer

and see what they think about that now.

I'm sure they'll still think it was apocalyptic.

[light music]

Hello Vogue, I'm Blake Lively and this is My Life in Looks.

Here we go.

A-ha.

Okay, so this is Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants.

This is my first job.

I was 16 years old here.

I played a soccer player.

The shoes are questionable.

They're really, I don't know why I didn't keep this.

I'm in a habit of trying to keep a piece of my wardrobe

and these shoes, wow, they are, they are very 2004.

But this was such a special experience

because I met three of my best friends

who remain my best friends.

I was so lucky on my first job to meet women

who were just so dynamic and powerful and vulnerable

and distinctly themselves.

I just had such great role models to look up to.

A key part of the story is that each of the women

are so different than one another,

and each have such distinct style and personalities,

so to really see how much fashion could define a character,

differentiate a character, it really, I think,

imprinted on me young.

So this is a neat image to look at for that reason.

This was my first red carpet ever, or orange carpet, rather.

Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants was about to come out,

I was still in high school

and I remember this was April 2, 2005,

and I remember that date because I was at a photo shoot

for Sisterhood and my sister was about to give birth,

and they said, You need to go do this red carpet.

So I think two of us got invited

and two of us were not allowed in,

'cause we weren't, I don't know,

we weren't a big enough deal to make the guest list.

They probably regret that now.

I bet I'm gonna make the guest list this year.

The teal thing is a T-shirt that my mom found at Forever 21

or I found, I don't know.

My mom is so kooky and amazing with fashion.

She'll find a dress and cut off the top

and wear it as a skirt,

and if she runs out of lipstick,

she'll lick the end of an Advil and rub it on her lips

to give her lips and cheeks.

I mean, it's, I've seen her use dark chocolate

as eyeshadow before.

And then this little over thing, which felt so cute,

my low rise Abercrombie jeans and Aldo heels,

and I had this fluffy flower broach

that went on the belt buckle,

which covered my Hot Topic belt buckle,

and it gave it a little bit of a feminine je ne sais quoi,

and then the flower came off.

Still to this day, I don't see how horrifying this look is,

I see that, Oh, if the flower would've been there,

this look would've been aces.

Gossip Girl, this dress.

I mean, I think this dress was one of the most critical

sort of fashion moments of Gossip Girl.

This was a Ralph Lauren dress.

This was just such a beautiful look,

those little cropped black gloves.

And I ended up wearing Ralph Lauren to the Met.

That was my first year that I was invited to a Met Gala

and I think they only invited me because of this dress.

And I even wore cropped gloves there

because it was such a sweet look.

But that show, Eric Damon, our costume designer,

was just so spectacular and inventive

and he really took that idea to the next level

of characters really having a look.

They were almost caricatures of themselves.

They had such distinct look and fashion

and I just find that so inspiring.

To this day, I bring that with me to every character.

The impact of the fashion on that show

was greater than anything else,

greater than the storytelling, greater than the characters

and it definitely changed my life.

Vogue, my God.

I mean, this was so surreal.

It's still surreal to me.

I was, I think, 21 years old.

Gossip Girl had been around for maybe a year,

and I was asked to be on the cover of Vogue,

which was, was and is still just, I mean,

leaves me speechless.

I love how classic and old time-y the look was.

I look at my life now and things that I'm inspired by now

and I think that this was another one of those things

that really shaped me,

this sort of iconic, Veronica Lake style hairdo.

It was smart, Anna putting a 21 year old girl

on a CW teen soap on the cover of Vogue,

to make this shoot more timeless.

I Googled this photo today because I was trying to remember

what year this was taken, and the headline said,

Blake Lively, amazing or apocalyptic.

I gotta look up that writer

and see what they think about that now.

I'm sure they'll still think it was apocalyptic.

Next.

Well, this is Saturday Night Live.

Look at that.

Oh my gosh, I mean, how cool was that?

So I get to host Saturday Night Live,

which is just still, I can't believe, to this day

that I was able to host Saturday Night Live.

I don't work with a stylist, I never have.

The stylist, I believe his name is Tom, there,

he does all the costume designs for Saturday Night Live,

I went to him the night before and I said,

Oh, so what do I wear for the monologue?

And he was like, Oh, we don't do that.

We do all the character pieces.

And I said, Well, I didn't, I don't know what to,

I wasn't, I was styling myself

but I wasn't calling in looks at the time.

I would just sort of go in the closet

of whatever we had at Gossip Girl and borrow.

So he pulled a dress from Topshop the day before.

This is just a sweet Topshop dress,

and yeah, I think I'm wearing these beautiful earrings.

And I got to host Saturday Night Live.

Next.

So this was my second Vogue cover.

Amazing or apocalyptic, I don't know.

Amazing.

This is Rob Machado back there,

who's one of the greatest surfers alive ever.

So he took me out on a long board

and he would paddle, paddle, paddle,

and I was just like, He's the best.

I just sat on the board.

And every single time he would stand up and he said,

My goal is, if I do my job right,

you won't get wet at all.

Okay, so this night,

we were shooting Gossip Girl in Paris.

This was the night

that I met Karl Lagerfeld for the first time.

I told Anna Wintour that I was a big fan of his

and that I would love to work with Chanel one day,

and she was like, Well, let's go to dinner,

Come to dinner with us.

So she invited me out to dinner with her and Karl.

I wanted to wear something for Karl that felt,

I don't know, different

or like it had a perspective or take.

So I asked to wear a men's blazer and they were like,

Oh, I don't know about that.

And now you see it and you're like, Well, obviously,

that was a thing.

But at the time, this was a,

I was very scared to leave the house

in an oversized men's blazer with these short shorts.

And the sequins were little turquoise paillettes.

It was amazing.

And I had a vintage Chanel purse that I found

at some thrift store in New Orleans.

He was so great and he was like, Let's go get eclairs.

So he took me out to Cafe de Flor, and we got eclairs.

We rode around Paris in a convertible Bentley.

This sounds so surreal, and I thought,

Well, Karl, he's gonna be noticed.

But I mean, I guess you don't mind.

But you're sitting in this, it was white or silver.

It matched his outfit in some way.

It was like, Disney Cinderella movies don't capture

what I felt on that night.

Sweet Karl.

Okay, next.

Okay, so this is the Savages premiere.

This is a Zuhair Murad dress.

Beautiful vintage jewelry that Lorraine Schwartz sent to me.

I don't know, a year or two later,

they made a Barbie with this dress.

They changed the hair a little, but I was like,

I made it onto a Barbie.

Look, Mom.

And they were like, No no no, that's not you.

I was like, Wait, no but it is.

It's the same dress, it's the same.

They're like, No, that's not, no, you're mistaken.

This is Cannes.

This is my first time at Cannes.

This is a beautiful custom Gucci dress.

I was actually, so this dress was made for the Met.

So two weeks before, one or two weeks before,

was the Met, the Charles James exhibit.

It was the first time

my husband and I did a red carpet together,

but I was meant to wear that dress

that I wore to the Met here to Cannes,

and I was meant to wear this for the Charles James.

But a couple nights before, I thought,

Well, there may be other people wearing something similar,

so let me flip flop them.

The jewels on this, on the front side of this,

these diamonds.

They were insane.

I just love this because I love jewelry.

I think it's such an important part of fashion and styling,

but this was one where it was just simplicity.

I mean, it's easy to say simplicity

when you're dripping in, I don't know,

500 karats of diamonds, but it was just so chic.

I just, this is still one of my favorite looks of all time

to this day.

So this is the Angel Ball.

I'm wearing another beautiful Gucci dress here.

When Gucci sent this dress,

they still didn't know I was pregnant.

But I said, Oh, this looks cute,

'cause it looked kinda stretchy,

so I thought I may be able to squeeze into it.

But this was a charity event

that I went to for Lorraine Schwartz.

It's a great event that raises money for cancer.

People suspected I was pregnant, but this was the moment.

This was sort of I guess my pregnancy coming out.

That was a fun, that was a fun night.

This is The Age of Adaline.

Those are my own pants I'm wearing.

You'll see, I show up with my own wardrobe a lot.

But that was a movie that was such an amazing experience.

I got to work with Angus Strathie,

who was the costume designer for Moulin Rouge,

and that's one of my favorite movies of all time.

So I was sufficiently geeked out to be working with him.

And my character is born in 1900

and it spans until current times.

There was just the most incredible hair and makeup,

costume design, and Carol was the hair stylist.

She used my own hair for the front of everything.

She would roll up my own hair under it

and style my hair in the front

to sort of look like this more 1950s look,

so that was just such a great tour

through fashion and beauty.

And then, on this movie, I secretly got pregnant.

We found out while I was shooting this movie.

It was, it's especially meaningful to me, this film

and this experience.

Cannes again.

I do have a life between Cannes and pregnancies.

I just wanna make that clear that my life in looks,

there were many years that happened between this.

Nobody had seen me since I was filming The Shallows

and I was in a bathing suit in that,

and then nobody saw me for,

I think this was five months later.

I went to Cannes and the first few looks

that I wore at Cannes, you can't tell that I'm pregnant,

'cause I am very private

and I'm very protective of my children

and I don't wanna share them with the world

and I feel like that starts when they're in the womb.

So I just thought,

I'm just gonna dress like I'm not pregnant.

I'm just gonna wear what I would wear

if I wasn't pregnant.

It was sort of a neat press tour

because I remember I would show up one day

and they would be like, She's pregnant!

And then the next day, you'd see another dress

and they were like, Oh shoot, maybe she's not.

Maybe we misspoke.

Which I also think was an interesting conversation,

because why do we obsess over women's bodies

and what's going on?

If I wanna say I'm pregnant, I'll say I'm pregnant.

Otherwise, it's just me showing up on a red carpet.

Our bodies are ever-changing and ever-evolving

and that doesn't belong to anyone else.

So here is A Simple Favor.

The fun part about A Simple Favor

is because I was so inspired by Paul Feig's looks,

he was sort of, he was my muse.

No, he was the director.

I sat down with him

and I thought we were gonna talk about the character

in one of our first meetings, and he said,

What do you want her to look like?

What do you want her fashion to be?

And that really caught me off guard

because I was used to going to directors and saying,

Okay, this is what I think the fashion should be,

this is where I think we should go with this style,

and it was something that was the last on their mind.

So when he asked me so ahead of time,

I honestly didn't know what to say and I was blown away.

We had the most incredible costume designer, Renee Kalfus,

and she was someone who, Paul and I talked about that idea

and then she took it and just ran with it.

She sourced the most amazing suits

and we had the best time together.

If I could work with her on everything, I would.

She was just,

oh, she's somebody who makes anything feel possible.

But anyway, I would show up on set some days

and Paul and I would be like Mary-Kate and Ashley.

We'd be full twinning in the exact same outfit.

It was a permanent Who Wore It Better

each day with Paul Feig.

This is without a doubt my favorite look of all time.

This is the Met Gala 2018, Versace dress.

I get very involved in the design of the dresses.

I don't know if it's just that I'm a Virgo

or that I need a life.

This one was actually a dress that they had made,

but it had a train that was like this.

It was a shorter train.

So we took this dress and said, Okay, what if?

I said, Can you guys add eight feet of train?

Can you add beading on the inside?

This had ruching in the middle,

which kind of looked like it was too tight

and pulling at the hips, so I was like,

We need to pick up that pattern here as well

so that you, so that it looks like a part of the dress.

And this was just a headpiece that Lorraine made

with these brown diamonds and brass.

It wasn't even gold, it was brass,

'cause we were just making,

it was bendable hardware store brass.

These earrings, she made the night before.

She had these giant emeralds and stuck it

on one of her sister Ophera's shield gold earrings,

and she stuck an emerald on top.

So it was very makeshift.

Christian Louboutin made the most beautiful shoes.

I just love this look so much.

I just thought it was just so striking.

It's something that when my kids are giving me attitude,

I'm like, This is your mom, come on.

I'm an actual, I try to tell them

that I'm real life royalty

and that they're lucky that I'm raising them.

They don't buy it, they don't believe it.

This was such a special night, and I'm matching the carpet,

and this has become a thing.

Did an Instagram post where I said,

When the carpet matches the Blakes, instead of the drapes.

But it's just been a crazy thing every year

where I match the carpet.

This year, I'm actually hosting

and I went to Anna beforehand and I said,

Anna, there's a lot of pressure.

I really need to match the carpet this year

because we've set a precedent.

But somehow, I don't know, I just intuit,

whoever this carpet designer and I, we're soulmates

because we intuit the same thing.

There was a Versace look I wore with gold and blue feathers

matching the carpet.

But yeah, always matching the carpet.

Not this year though.

Oh, I feel like I hadn't been on a red carpet in a while.

Look at my cute little Pikachu nails by Elle Garcia.

She had these little Pokemon balls on my nails.

I was pregnant and I couldn't hide it any longer.

My husband was doing a premiere for his movie,

so we thought, Well, instead of letting some paparazzi

walking down the street get a photo,

I'll just show up looking like a giant yellow ball.

And then my husband in his cute denim vest.

How sweet is that?

Okay, so this is my first ad for my company Betty Buzz.

They were made to be mixed, so my husband is a gin slinger.

So when I went to do my first ad for Betty Buzz,

I went in his closet and I was like,

This would sort of be great if I just took his clothes,

because you drive around New York City

and there are trucks with his face on it

with his Aviation bottle.

But I thought how fun that would be to sort of surprise him

with a truck with my face on it.

So I went in his closet and put on his favorite coat.

This is a Ric Owens jacket, and his jeans and T-shirt.

Same chair, same spot.

And so anyway, and that was the first Betty Buzz ad.

And people saw that ad and it went over very well,

but what people don't know is that I'm actually wearing

his clothing in it, so you guys gotta find a picture of him

in this exact same coat.

So this is The Adam Project premiere.

I just wanted to look like My Little Pony.

I just wanted my kids to think I'm fabulous,

and Versace, sure enough, had this.

But I wanted it to skew a bit more, I don't know,

60s, 70s feeling.

So with the hair and the wooden jewels,

I just wanted it to feel slightly more bohemian.

And I couldn't decide between these insane yellow diamonds

and these lavender jade circles,

which is what I thought I would wear.

I was like, Oh, why don't I wear both?

So I ended up layering the two.

I always like to do strange things with the styling.

This was the Gem Awards, which is why,

if you look closely right here,

you'll see I have a giant, I don't know,

it's like the heart of the ocean sewn onto my dress,

this yellow diamond.

And Lorraine made these earrings that morning

because I was like,

I wanna do yellow diamonds with black jackets.

She had this great idea to mix it with nude diamonds as well

and do different shapes around it, and I said,

Just do you have a spare yellow diamond

you can just give to me,

just to borrow to sew onto the dress?

So I am in that car with a needle and thread

and I am sewing this yellow diamond onto my dress,

just praying that this thing doesn't come off.

And then literally leaving the event, they're like,

You need to give it back to us.

I'm like, It's sewn onto the dress.

They were like, Here's a knife.

I'm sitting there cutting this diamond off.

This is a beautiful Sergio Hudson dress.

I saw his beautiful designs for the first time

at the Inauguration, and his taste and his design is just,

is so impeccable because it's classic

yet it still feels inspired.

Sergio, @ me.

I don't even know what that means,

I just feel like that's something

the kids are saying these days.

What an honor to get to host and to wear this dress.

Versace turned it out.

But rather than looking at fashion from the Gilded Age,

I wanted to look at architecture.

New York has been such a critical part of who I am.

It's the place I choose to live.

It's the love of my life, other than my family.

So I thought, Well, I would love to arrive

in a copper dress and have that dress patina

as I ascend the carpet and turns verdigris,

which is oxidized copper.

The Statue of Liberty obviously showed up as a shiny copper

like a penny and now it's the green that we have.

So instead of me performing,

I wanted sort of the dress to perform.

I think Versace thought I was crazy

when I called him and pitched this.

This column of the dress, the lines in it are an homage

to the Empire State Building.

The draping on the side is sort of a tip of the hat

to the Statue of Liberty.

And this is the constellation ceiling

of Grand Central Station.

Grand Central felt

like sort of a really neat full circle moment

because the first shot of Gossip Girl,

I'm on a train and I pull into the station,

and it's a shot of Grand Central Station.

So that's it, that's my life in looks.

Thank you so much for watching.

I can't wait to, in a few decades from now,

do some geriatric fashion with you guys,

really round out this life in looks.

And I think I get to sign this thing,

so who am I signing it to?

My mom?

Can we give this to my mom?

Thank her for all she did to get me here.

Mom, this one's for you.

Thanks.

[light music]

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