Fashion Frontline: Gossip Girl Lifestyle and High Tech Zara

Best known for portraying former party queen Serena van der Woodsen on teen drama Gossip Girl, American actress, model and celebrity homemaker Blake Lively has now added “online lifestyle guru” to her list of accomplishments; launching Preserve (www.preserve.us), a curated lifestyle website.

Carefully created by Lively and her team, Preserve offers an experience designed yet homely. From its delicate design fusing Old World fonts with wooden textures and sun-bleached sepia-toned photographs, the site invites you into a seductively slowed-down vision of living a beautiful life. Inspirational videos and photo essays offer insights into topics as diverse as creating an eternal summer atmosphere in your home, through to style features on the enduring popularity of the little black dress. Alongside the fashion and home sections, Preserve.us recipes offer an array of healthy and delicious dishes sure to leave the casual web surfer ravenous. Once done reading, the shop offers an enticing bespoke range of products, from $7-bottles of savory ketchup to $1,000-Sandast bags.

Meanwhile, New York Fashion Week has announced plans for its second consecutive Men’s Fashion Day, Calvin Klein has teamed with Mytheresa.com to reissue and update iconic 1990s CK wear, and Michael Kors’ Watch Hunger Stop initiative has helped deliver 5 million meals to hungry children around the world. Spanish clothing chain Zara plans to embed inventory-tracking microchips in the alarms attached to its garments, and Forbes magazine reports that Brazilian supermodel Gisele Bündchen earned a record $47 million this year, bringing the 33-year-old’s career earnings to a total of $386 million.