Forever 21 is every girl's paradise and India's most preferred fast-fashion destination owing to its trendy clothing, a wide range of fashion and jewellery and affordable pricing. Just like all the other girls, American actor Blake Lively in her early days too preferred Forever 21 for most of her "vintage" red carpet looks.
Before getting decked up in gorgeous designer gowns for events, Blake found her most stunning red carpet looks from the fast fashion label, reported People.
Blake famously styles herself and has built relationships with high-fashion brands like Versace, Dior, and Chanel to create looks for her to wear to major red carpet events. However, before the actor made it big in Hollywood, she did her most of her red carpet shopping at the mall!
In a newly published InStyle interview as cited by People, Blake spoke about her style secrets at length.
While speaking to actor Sydney Sweeney for the magazine interview, Blake shared a style secret she kept early on.
"I wore Forever 21 much longer than I admitted," the 31-year-old star told Sydney in the interview.
Eventually, Blake wanted to be little low-key about her looks, so she started pretending that the dresses were actually "vintage" designer pieces and the people believed her fib.
"I just started saying it was vintage because I was so ashamed for it," the actor laughed.
She added, "For me, fashion is a form of self-expression. It also really takes me out of my comfort zone. 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."
Now when it comes to dressing for an event, the actor turns to designers who she knows can make her feel confident.
"I just try to find designers who I like and trust and who make my body look better than it does when it's not in clothes," she said.
Truly loving and feeling comfortable in the outfit she wears is of the utmost importance to Blake, who still cringes when she looks back at outfits she didn't feel 100 per cent comfortable wearing.
"For one of my first events, I wore a dress that I was so insecure in, but I was told that I couldn't back out because it was made custom and it would hurt my relationship with the designer," she said.
"It didn't fit right though, and everybody knew it was a mess. Whenever I look at a photo from that red carpet, I can see how uncomfortable I was in my own skin. I'd never do that again," she added.
Blake also said that channeling a certain celebrity in particular and striking a "smoldering" face can always help on the red carpet to nail a pose.
"With some outfits, you need to do a smolder because if you're wearing a slit up to your hip bone and you're smiling like you're on Space Mountain, it just doesn't go together. It took me a few years to learn it too. If you pretend that you're J.Lo, that helps," she said.
Lively also said that she hopes her red-carpet style has gotten "more elegant" now.
"There are lots of cute little baby-doll dresses in my closet from my early 20s that I know I'm not going to wear them again because I'm not in 'Whatever Happened to Baby Jane.' I really need to adopt the Marie Kondo method, but I haven't yet because everything in my closet still sparks joy. My style is, hopefully, becoming more elegant over time, but I still like pink and some frills," she confessed.
Blake previously admitted the strapless yellow mini dress she wore to the 2005 Teen Choice Awards was only worth USD 13 and was a Forever 21 design.
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