Blake Lively: From Sweatpants Girl To Fashionista

These days, Blake Lively is known for being one of the best-dressed young actresses on the block, but it didn’t come naturally.

The “Gossip Girl” star told the February issue of Vogue magazine that her California fashion pedigree once consisted of “sweatpants and UGGS.”

Luckily for Blake, who plays Upper East Side high schooler Serena van der Woodsen, moving to New York for the show has helped bolster her fashion sense.

“Just being here, walking around, you pick it up really quickly,” she told the mag. “In New York, you put on skinny jeans and riding boots and a leather coat and handbag, and you take on that posture and character… It becomes very natural.”

And then there’s the wardrobe department of The CW show to help too.

“The fashion is just unbelievable,” she said. “You can watch our show on mute and be entertained.”

And now, Blake has absorbed so many style tips, the show often takes some cues from her real life.

“The more they work with me and see my style, and the more I learn about fashion, the more input I have,” she said. “It’s more collaborative now than it was in the beginning because then I had no idea what I was doing.”

As a child, Blake had a great wardrobe too, thanks to her mother, a former model, who tailored adult clothes to her tiny frame.

“She just did that because she was so creative and because she didn’t want me to be dressed in big T-shirts cinched with a plastic clip like all the rest of the kids,” Blake explained.

Unfortunately, standing out as a child, can cause problems. Wearing the ensembles her mother helped shape led to teasing as a youth at one educational outpost.

“It was the only school where people were just downright mean to me,” Blake said of a private school in LA. “They would make fun of my clothes because I dressed differently than the other kids.”