US Vogue August 2014 : Blake Lively by Mario Testino

[edenL]

okay... I see Vogue Taiwan here...

 

[HeatherAnne]

If you thought the editorial was nauseating...

Blake Lively—From Gossip Girl to Internet Entrepreneur by Jonathan Van Meter | photographed by Mario Testino


Blake Lively brings her unerring eye, Southern roots, and love of storytelling to her latest venture—a Web site called Preserve. Jonathan Van Meter heads West to meet up with the Gossip Girl turned Internet entrepreneur. Jackson Hole, Wyoming, is one of those startling American places where “purple mountain majesties” becomes gloriously real, no longer a patriotic abstraction from a song learned in grade school. But it is also home to some of the most expensive real estate imaginable—great, logged-up monuments to show-business wealth and fame. Oh, give me a twelve-bedroom, fourteen-bath home, where the buffalo still sort of occasionally roam!

Blake Lively has never been here until today, but when I meet her in the soaring lobby of the Amangani resort one evening in late May she is dressed as if she has taken the landscape into consideration. Not many women can wear denim overalls, strappy Louboutin stilettos, and a Navajo-blanket poncho and get away with it, but Blake Lively can. When I compliment her, she describes the look as “if Sling Blade and Pocahontas had a baby.” Lively has a tendency toward deadpan humor, often delivered with a laconic stare that can make it difficult to figure out whether she is joking or not. “When I say something funny, I don’t laugh,” she says, “so my friends are always like, ‘Hahahahaaaa!’ so people know. When I’m not with them, I always think, This person doesn’t know I’m funny; they just think I’m a jerk.”

Lively, who is back from Cannes, where she was obliged to make appearances as a L’Oréal “ambassador,” as well as stroll the red carpet with her husband, Ryan Reynolds, for the premiere of his film The Captive, is both jet-lagged and feeling unwell. “I ate some mystery meat on the plane, and I feel poisoned,” she says. As we head out to the car that will take us to dinner in town, she says, “Do you mind if I sit in the front? I get motion sickness.” Pause. “God, I’m like a toddler. I hope you have Cheerios in your bag.” And then, once in the car: “Now, to be triply annoying, I have to make a work-related call. I’m so sorry.”

Having spent the last two years building a Web site called Preserve that is about to launch, Lively—like a mother with a newborn—has to grab opportunities to work whenever she can. As we’re driving, she tries to reach one of the dozen people on her team in Los Angeles (the company will eventually move to New York City). Much like the woman who founded it, Preserve is a fundamentally curious and free-spirited enterprise. Part digital monthly magazine, part e-commerce venture, part video blog, the site will seek out and celebrate people all over America who are making things—food, clothes, pillows, dishes, dining-room tables—with their hands. Its design evokes a kind of moody-spooky beauty that one associates with Savannah or New Orleans (a favorite place of Lively and Reynolds’s).

Lively is hoping to tap into her generation’s obsession with all things small-batch: the perfectly imperfect handcrafted, the exquisitely bespoke, the deliciously artisanal. She is, in essence, using all the modern-day digital tricks of the trade to shine a light on—to preserve—all those finer, simpler things in American life that are in danger of getting touch-screened into extinction, trampled on by the medium itself. It will be a neat trick if she can pull it off.

“I am really excited about it,” says Ivanka Trump, another willowy workaholic who knows a thing or two about brand extension. “Through curation, storytelling, nurturing creativity, she’s really sharing another side of herself with a much larger audience.” I ask Ivanka if she was surprised by her friend’s new career direction. “I don’t think there’s such a disconnect between what she’s traditionally done as an actress and this new platform. Her ability to story-tell is something that she’s clearly cultivated since childhood.”

Back in the car, when she finally gets the editor on the phone, Lively—the 26-year-old who starred in Gossip Girl for six years as Serena van der Woodsen and who became a fashion plate famous for her distinct (no-stylist) style—surprises me with the authority of her vision. “With the bow-tie story,” she says, “I think by shifting into the first person, he would be able to make it a lot more personal . . . that authentic, sort of flawed voice that we’ve been trying to accomplish. I was a little liberal with my revisions. But the humor was already there, so I just went with it.” She flips through the pile of manuscripts in her lap, turning to a different piece. “I think the writer should just scrap it and start over. Because this guy’s work is beautiful . . . but what’s the story? Why bags? Why leather? Why the European military influence?” She pauses for a moment. “And one small thing, which shows up in every piece: the word things. My dad was an English professor. There’s always a more eloquent, descriptive word.”

When we pull up to the restaurant, Lively is still on the call, which she continues up the steps, through the door, and right up to the minute that the hostess appears in front of us. Lively is a serious foodie. She has apprenticed for the day alongside chefs in restaurants from Barcelona to New Orleans and is, by all accounts, a pretty accomplished cook herself. So when we find ourselves in a windowless dining room with a handful of older couples quietly eating lamb chops, our hearts sink. She stares at me with a look that says, Really? It came highly recommended, I say. “By whom,” she asks, “someone who hates us?” It takes a second for me to get that she’s kidding (I think). A waiter approaches us to ask if we’d like to start with something to drink. “Can I have the French onion soup to drink?” says Lively.

“I’m sorry?” says the waiter.

“See what happens?” Lively says to me. “You have to be my laugh track.” And then to the waiter with a big grin: “I’m starving.” When the waiter leaves, she explains that she is like a perpetual growing boy: always hungry. “You know that old saying, A way to a man’s heart is through his stomach—that’s me.”

Lively attributes her obsession with food and cooking to her Southern roots. Though she (the youngest of five) was raised near Burbank in Los Angeles and looks every inch the Malibu surfer girl, her father grew up in Virginia and her mother in Tallapoosa, a speck of a place on the border between Georgia and Alabama. “My mother had very humble beginnings—to put it mildly,” says Lively. “Her dad built their home out of timber that he cut down on their land. No heat, no air-conditioning—no foolishness, as he would call it. She worked in the fields from sunup to sundown, from the time she could walk. She’s strong as an ox. She learned how to break a chicken’s neck and pluck the feathers when she was a little girl. Food to me is love. When the whole family comes together, my mom makes a big meal, usually a family dish that was passed down,” she says. Indeed, Lively talks so much about the South—her wedding near Charleston, her multistate road trips with Reynolds—that it’s easy to forget that she grew up in a family of showfolk in California.

Lively didn’t start cooking until she moved to New York City when she was still a teenager. She quickly got caught up in Manhattan’s foodie culture, where every chef is now a celebrity chef and the obsession with artisanal foods—Small-Batch Brooklyn—seems to grow exponentially, year after year. Why, I ask, are people your age so interested in food? “My theory is that people used to love that they could go anywhere in the world and find that same cup of coffee. They could be in the most rural place and—surprise!—there’s a Starbucks. But something’s shifted. People want to get back to the magic of smaller, special, and handmade. We grew up getting every bit of information we needed instantly. So we want to know the backstory; we want to know why something is the way it is. And if there’s no answer other than because it’s big, because it makes money, because it’s corporate—we don’t connect with that. People want things with meaning. I know that because I want that. This space doesn’t exist, so I’m creating it.”

After dinner we head back to the hotel, and Lively shows me a binder that is about a foot thick, filled with information and images she has been collecting for the past decade. “I’ve been doing this my whole adult life. When I see something I love—a lamp, a piece of art—I say, Where did you get that? And I will go to the store, take pictures, and get the business card. I have everything from food to fashion to home goods; you name it.” She starts to flip through. “Here are cutting boards and muddlers and lighting. And bike racks and bitters and tea. This is an artist I love: Travis Louie. And here’s this ceramicist who does these drawings and then these weird dolls that go with them. I like things that have a fairy-tale aspect, but with a sinister twist.” Very obsessive, I say. “I don’t know why I have been saving all this stuff. Isn’t it weird? It’s totally weird!”

Perhaps because of the scorn that has been heaped on Gwyneth Paltrow and her Web site, Goop, Lively is quick to point out that she is “not trying to show you the perfect life or the aspirational life. It’s real life. It’s the thing that blindsides you on an idle Tuesday that’s tragic but that also makes you who you are. It’s not about me. And it’s not about watching my journey of learning how-to, it’s about me sharing that with you so we all sort of learn together.”

When I ask if she is worried about being mocked à la Paltrow, she says, “I’m sure there will be plenty of people who will say horrible things. I’m sure this interview will be picked apart. But you can’t worry about it. There have been so many things written about me that are untrue and horrifying. I can’t even believe that my family has to read this stuff. You just have to do what makes you happy, because you’ll never get a unanimous vote. People like to gossip. They bond over it. They don’t bond over complimenting famous people. I’m always the first person to defend Gwyneth Paltrow. Or any woman in a position of power, like Martha Stewart or Oprah, who gets burned. Because they have paved the path for so many other women who are doing something they believe in.”

Given that the first line of Lively’s Wikipedia entry is “Blake Ellender Lively is an American actress, model, and celebrity homemaker,” I suppose it should not come as a surprise to hear that her “idol” is Martha Stewart. Lively, who has been renovating a big farmhouse in upstate New York, not far from Stewart’s, has become friendly with the mother of all how-to tastemakers. “I’ve only ever found her to be completely generous and kind,” says Lively. “She’s one of those people who connect people with each other. She’s there for you.” Stewart also acted as a fairy godmother, watching over Blake and Ryan’s wedding. “Our wedding was becoming a disaster, and we didn’t know what to do, so we called Martha! She said, ‘Don’t worry. I’ll handle it.’ She sent her team down to save us. And then she called her friends who have a home in South Carolina and set us up at the most amazing getaway. This is the day of our wedding!”

The two met through a mutual acquaintance, says Stewart, “and then I invited them for my big Easter do. We had her entire family—maybe twelve of them came for brunch, and they were all very fun. Quite the close-knit family on Blake’s side.” When I ask Stewart about their shared passion, she replies, “I think she considers me a kind of mentor. And I think anyone who is as home-oriented as she is, this new venture doesn’t surprise me.” Besides, she adds, “actresses have a lot of free time between takes. They sit around and they watch stuff and they learn.”

Ryan Reynolds is not officially on the Preserve team, but his fingerprints will be all over it. “He’s a part of it because everything we do in life we do together,” says Lively. “If I’m working on a movie, he helps me with my character; I do the same with him. Picking out a coffee table. What we’re going to eat. He’s a beautiful writer—he’s written a lot of stuff for us. And he’s got a great barometer and he knows me, so he will tell me if it’s not as good as it can be.”

If Lively is comfortable enough looking at the big picture to create a panoramic Web site, she also takes the long view of her husband: “He’s going to be a great father and leader and patriarch—he’s so meant to be all of those things. The fact that he lived so much before we got together, he’s the exact realized person that he should be. And so I get to share my life with the person he’s become, and we get to grow from there.”

We wind up talking about how one of the best things about being in a relationship is the way it can change your thinking. “I find that all the time with Ryan,” she says. “I get really frustrated when something goes wrong. For example, my wedding dress. Florence Welch was singing at the reception, and they brought out these sparklers, and I’m watching her sing. I look down and my wedding dress has a big burn mark from one of the sparklers. Right on the front! And it was just so heartbreaking to me. And later, my dress was hanging up and Ryan said, ‘Isn’t that beautiful?’ I said, ‘What?’ And he pointed to the burn. My heart just stopped, because it was such a sensitive little subject. And he said, ‘You’ll always remember that moment with Florence singing and the sparklers. You have that forever, right there, preserved.’ Now that’s my favorite part of the dress.”

vogue

 

[HeatherAnne]

cont.

A week later, I meet Lively at the Bowery Hotel in Manhattan at 10:00 a.m. When she answers the door to her room, she is wearing sleek gray pajamas and has spectacular bedhead. She had been at the CFDA Fashion Awards the night before and then to an after-party for Michael Kors that went late, which is why she woke up three minutes ago. She disappears into the bathroom to brush her teeth and, when she comes out, catches a glimpse of herself in the mirror, cups both of her breasts, and says, “Oh, my God, I’m giving you the full Barbarella.”

Next she orders an eggs-and-sausage feast from room service, which we spread out on the coffee table and promptly devour. How this girl keeps her curves in the right places is a mystery to be solved by another writer. I tell her that I watched Ben Affleck’s The Town the night before and was struck by how effortlessly someone who’s never had a drink in her life managed to inhabit such a drugged-up mess of a girl. She laughs. “Yeah, and ever since then, every single role I get offered is a prostitute. You do a movie to change the way people think about you, and then they never see you any other way. It didn’t help matters that I followed it up with Savages and another sexually charged, drug-addled young woman.”

When Gossip Girl ended in 2012, Lively decided to take a year off. “I just needed time to regenerate,” she says. “I was reading scripts that I liked, but I felt like I had atrophied in a way. We had to produce so many episodes so quickly. And when you’re working fifteen-hour days, ten months a year, the only time you have for real life is between takes. So you’re not really acting anymore. You’re reciting. I could have fought harder and made Gossip Girl something different, but I also needed to have a life, you know? So I wanted a break to figure things out.” Here she slips into a faux-dreamy voice. “What type of prostitute will I play next? Will it be a Wild West prostitute? A prostitute in the future?” She laughs. “I just wanted time to feel like I could be good again.”

Instead she took all that material she had been collecting and decided to turn it into a business. “If I hadn’t ever been an actor,” she says, “this is what I would’ve done anyway. Acting is very transactional: You’re hired to do the job, and you walk off set and you see the movie a year later. You don’t have a hand in any of that. Whereas this is something where every single step of the way, every decision, comes from my heart.”

Then, just as she was heading into the final stretch of getting Preserve off the ground, Lively fell in love with the script for The Age of Adaline, the story of a woman born at the turn of the twentieth century who, because of a freak accident, does not age past 29 for more than 100 years. “I just couldn’t not be in that movie,” she says. “It’s such a beautiful script. And you rarely find a woman at the center of a film. I joke about the prostitute thing, but oftentimes female characters are layered and complex because they have a dark side. You don’t usually see characters like Annie Hall—complex just because she’s complex. And to see a character who is alive from 1908 until now? The first thought is, Oh, the wardrobe! The makeup!”

The film is directed by Lee Toland Krieger (Celeste & Jesse Forever) and also stars Harrison Ford and Michiel Huisman, a Dutch newcomer best known for his role as Daario Naharis on Game of Thrones. Ellen Burstyn, who is 81, plays Lively’s daughter in what may very well be a film in a category all its own: the epic-romantic-future-historic-drama. Adaline’s daughter, born before the accident, does age—hence the cinematic trick of having a daughter who is 55 years older than her mother. “I haven’t seen the film, so I can’t tell you if it was successful or not,” says Burstyn, “but on set it did seem like I somehow managed to screw my head around so that I was able to relate to Blake as my mother. She’s very contained, and yet when you look in her eyes you see great emotion there. Some actors stay with what they came in with. But she responds immediately to what you’re doing. She’s very alive in the moment.”

Although it might sound like fun to be forever young, the film explores the loneliness of the character. “Adaline can’t have the same friends forever, because people will eventually find out that she’s not aging,” observes Lively. “So there’s a strange disconnect for her, a person who has so much age and depth and experience but can’t connect to another person except for her daughter. That’s all she has.”

Lively herself is often drawn to women of “age and depth and experience.” Not long ago, for instance, Burstyn stayed in Lively’s guesthouse for the weekend. “She’s made what was an old barn into the most beautifully converted old barn in the world,” says Burstyn. “I was startled by the artistry that she displays in every direction.”

Lively also lights up when she talks about recently meeting Jane Fonda—whom she seemed to be channeling at the CFDA Fashion Awards, with her bouffant, hoop earrings, and gilded minidress. “I said to Ryan, ‘Darling, I made a new friend.’ And he’s like, ‘You only make friends with senior citizens!’  ” Why do you think that is? I ask her. “Young people try to heighten their experiences, and I do it, too: This is what makes me interesting. But Jane Fonda is quiet. You know how interesting she is. It’s who she is in every fiber.” (Stanley Tucci thinks Lively is an old soul: “I’m convinced she’s not 26. She looks like she is, but she’s so bloody smart and wise.”)

Back in Jackson Hole at dinner, I asked Lively if she could ever see herself giving up acting entirely and just being a “celebrity homemaker,” as Wikipedia put it. “I don’t think I could ever do just one thing,” she says. That’s another hallmark of your generation, I say. “No,” she says, “that’s my mom. My mom did everything that inspired her, everything she loved.” She tells me a story about talking to an actor at a party, one who sounds very much like Warren Beatty. “He’s an older gentleman, infamous playboy, very, very, very famous actor. I asked him, ‘Why did you marry your wife? You could have married anyone. Why her, finally?’ And he said, ‘There were plenty of women I could have married, but only one I couldn’t have divorced.’ ” She laughs, then stares off for a moment. “I find that applies to so much in life. Because there are so many choices I could make, but only a few that I can’t not make.”

vogue

 

[pixiedust1603]

That is one hell of a nauseating interview.

 

[dfl-001]

The same arguments can be made about US Vogue every month.
US Vogue is a chasm of mediocrity and redundancy.
Wintour, celebrity, Testino, same uninspired photoshoots...
This magazine is simply dull.

 

[SallyAlbright]

I really liked her in the Sisterhood movies, and although I didn't like Serena most of the time, she was fine on GG too. But her interviews, and this one is no exception, always reek of humblebragging to me. Maybe it's just nerves, (as I'm sure I'd cringe reading about myself too), but she was that way when I last saw her on Letterman as well.

 

[loladonna]

Well ain't that what Vogue is about? So maybe instead of arguing for them to lower their black standards the argument should be that they raise their white standards and maybe in that world Amy, Julianne, or Jessica with their combined 11 Oscar nods would have been on the cover. That's the real injustice of this issue and what a glorious cover that would have been with all three of them! and about working harder than your peers, tell that to Amy, how many more Oscar nods will she have to get to land even one cover?

You seem to be missing the point. No one's arguing for Vogue to lower their standards for Black women. We're simply wondering why only Black cover stars are held to such a high standard. If White actresses were held to the same high standards then we wouldn't spend every month wondering why some seemingly undeserving starlet is on the cover and the likes of Amy Adams would have had a cover by now.

 

[justaguy]

HAHA, I had no idea she was still around.

 

[dior_couture1245]

Everyone seems to be missing the point....getting a magazine cover has nothing to do with "deserving it" - in fact, it's besides the point. No one DESERVES a magazine cover. You either get one or you don't. That's it. Getting the cover of Vogue has as much to do with "deserving it" as it does getting the cover of Us Weekly or Playboy - which is to say - it don't matter! Vogue magazine is not in the business of handing out Nobel Peace Prizes....

 

[loladonna]

I dared to read about her website. It's funny there was all that build up for a site that sounds remarkably like Lauren Conrad's The Little Market. The premise is virtually the same except Lauren's site is Fair trade and sells hand made goods from artisans from impoverished countries and the emphasis is more on reducing poverty than on a "curated" lifestyle.

 

[dior_couture1245]

Also - I'm not quite sure what's wrong with her interview...in fact I rather enjoyed it.

I find that the current social climate doesn't tolerate people - celebrities in particular (Blake Lively, Gwyneth Paltrow)- who enjoy the "finer things in life" and care to talk about or share it. Somehow, the JLaw model of being lowest common denominator/Buzzfeed lifestyle is what's it's all about. Somehow that's more "real"? I for one, will always go for the aspirational aspect of culture...what else are fashion and celebrity good for aside from aspiration living?

 

[Deleted member 1957]

the whole deserving a cover thing is a tired song, this is Vogue not EW or Vanity fair, its a fashion magazine thats why the photographers are paid way more than the writters

 

[Breathless]

I'm so over American/Italian Vogue consistent mediocrity for the past several years. I don't even care to debate "deserving starlets" over and over again either. If Blake previous covers were worst sellers why on Earth is she on the cover again? You can't say because she is promoting a internet site, a movie, or whatever else. She is on the cover simply because Anna Wintour adores her and that is where the problem starts. I'm shocked that Conde Nast allowed her to get away with this if the numbers speak for themselves. This is also why I love Grace because she is the only one I've seen stand her ground with Anna.

 

[Deleted member 1957]

Also - I'm not quite sure what's wrong with her interview...in fact I rather enjoyed it.

I find that the current social climate doesn't tolerate people - celebrities in particular (Blake Lively, Gwyneth Paltrow)- who enjoy the "finer things in life" and care to talk about or share it. Somehow, the JLaw model of being lowest common denominator/Buzzfeed lifestyle is what's it's all about. Somehow that's more "real"? I for one, will always go for the aspirational aspect of culture...what else are fashion and celebrity good for aside from aspiration living?

Totally agree, the likes of Shailene Woodley are really taking the star out of hollywood star. I miss the days when the likes of Marilyn Monroe and the like could enjoy their stardom

 

[LagerfeldBoy]

3 damn covers under her belt. Sigh, what dirt does she have on Anna?
It's sad that all it takes is mediocrity to nab covers while poc have to constantly be beyond stellar to get them.
Zoe Saldana still deserves a cover, tbh.

 

[whysper]

There is no problem enjoying the finer things in life but nothing about Blake seems exciting and the French Onion soup tidbit has no meaning. If I'm supposed to be laughing, it's definitely not with her. If her previous covers were considered low-sellers, why bring her back in the ten fold? Especially since the sub headlines include the likes of Amy Adams. Zoe Saldana could've been a choice too since her Marvel film could be the next big thing.

She tried to make her "rising star" status happen but she couldn't capitalize because her other contemporaries like Jennifer Lawrence or Emma Stone have more appeal.

 

[IndigoHomme]

Nice pics, but the cover is horrible for me.

 

[Starry]

I am wondering what a cover it would be if they do the redhead headline on the cover: Jessica, Amy & Julianne together!

Anyway this cover is OK, I am curious about the editorial.

 

[blueorchid]

Totally agree, the likes of Shailene Woodley are really taking the star out of hollywood star. I miss the days when the likes of Marilyn Monroe and the like could enjoy their stardom

I wish they could somehow separate fashion magazines and entertainment/film magazines again. I really DO NOT care about what mediocre overprivileged actresses think about anything anymore. I just don't see the value or interest in it. I don't mind a magazine like Interview because that is the point of it.

At least Marilyn never had to appear on Vogue or Harper's Bazaar because magazines like Photoplay or Screenland or even Life Magazine existed for her! Someone needs to revive Photoplay for these idiots. I can't take it anymore!!

{If I remember from browsing the Vogue archives she (and other actresses) were featured in Vogue from time to time, but usually in the context of a film that was coming out (like a 2 paragraph blurb with a photo) or a feature on new talents, or whatever)

 

[kroqjock]

Is everyone here done complaining about Blake/Anna/Testino? Cuz it's now time that we focus our disdain on this month's content.


#1 - Pioneer Spirit (14 pg)
PH: Mario Testino
Style: Tonne Goodman
Celeb: Take a big guess.....


#2 - Mixed Media (8 pg)
PH: Mikael Jansson
Style: Tabitha Simmons
Models: Fei Fei Sun & Liu Wen


#3 - Fire Starters (10 pg)
PH: Annie Leibovitz
Style: Grace Coddington
Models/Celebs: Julianne Moore & Liv Freundlich (her daughter), Jessica Chastain, Domnhall Gleeson, Amy Adams, Karen Elson, Lily Cole, and Florence Welch


#4 - Secret Star (4 pg)
PH: Cass Bird
Style: Kathryn Neale
Celeb: Chitose Abe


#5 - Room of Her Own (4 pg)
PH: None
Celeb: Tina Barney


#6 - Thinking Big (4 pg)
PH: Jackie Nickerson
Style: Kathryn Neale
Celeb: Hadeel Ibrahim


#7 - The Empire Builder (6 pg)
PH: Jason Schmidt/Inez & Vinoodh
Celeb: Annabelle Sellfdorf


#8 - Surf And Surf (4 pg)
PH: Eric Boman
Celeb: A tasty lobster (Thermidor aux crevettes with a Mornay sauce, garnished with truffle pâté, brandy and a fried egg on top and Spam)


#9 - A Fine Feast (2 pg)
PH: Anton Corbijn
Style: Phyllis Posnick
Celebs: Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon


#10 - Polo Match (2 pg)
PH: Boo George
Style: Bill Mullen
Celebs: Annamarie Tendler & John Mulaney


#11 - Final Twist (2 pg)
PH: Angelo Pennetta
Style: Tabitha Simmons
Celeb: Olivia "The Fake Gamer" Munn


#12 - Clash Mob (8 pg)
PH: David Sims
Style: Marie Amelie-Sauve
Model: Caroline Trentini



Is this the best issue ever or what?!?