Cast your mind back to 2005. Can’t remember? You were probably bopping to the Arctic Monkey’s “I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor” dressed in a full Juicy Couture tracksuit and shouting into your Motorola Razor about how fetch your stack of highlighter-yellow Livestrong bands looked, because, charity.
This was also the year that brought us Blake Lively, then a fresh faced teen, who loved a low-slung faded jean as much as the rest of us. But not for long, after bursting onto the scene with her performance in The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants, Lively soon ditched said pants in favour of a higher waist band and rather a lot of Chanel couture. Since then, she has spent the last seventeen years sharpening her fashion credentials, regularly topping best dressed lists and rubbing shoulders with Manhattan’s (fashion) elite.
This year, however, Lively has well and truly cemented her place within the fashion pantheon, securing a much-coveted role as a co-chair of the Met Gala. The annual fashion soiree is hosted by fashion’s grande dame Anna Wintour at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art to celebrate the Costume Institute’s yearly fashion exhibition on a changing theme.
So how has the famously stylist-free Lively, 34 — or as she’s best remembered by her Gossip Girl alter-ego, Serena van der Woodsen — gone from eating lunch on the Met steps to walking up its a red carpet?
Hark back to 2005 and the writing or perhaps the embroidery was on the wall, as Lively stepped out at the premier of The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants in an elegant orange silk slip dress and loose chain or pearls — a far cry from the bejewelled hip-grazing belt she had worn at the Kid’s Choice Awards earlier in the year.
Lively really hit her sartorial stride in 2007, when she grabbed her alice band to play Serena in the iconic teen drama Gossip Girl. At the premiere, Lively eschewed her cutesy, California girl style in favour of full New York, androgynous chic, dressed in a silk black tuxedo - very Julian Casablancas.
Since then, Lively’s style has continued to evolve, but her originality and good taste have stayed as consistent as her flowing golden locks. Over the years, she has maintained her love affair with a two-piece, sometimes even a three-piece suit, reimagined vintage Hollywood glamour, made maternity wear chic and singlehandedly rehabilitated the colour yellow.
We’ve tracked down some of her best looks over the years for your perusal. Click through the gallery above.
