Blake Lively to close her lifestyle site, anticipates ‘really horrible’ reaction

Blake Lively is getting out of the lifestyle business, at least for now. Her Preserve website will go dark on Oct. 9, and she says its future is uncertain at best.

“We have an incredible team of people who do beautiful work, but we launched the site before it was ready, and it never caught up to its original mission: It’s not making a difference in people’s lives, whether superficially or in a meaningful way,” the actress and new mom told Vogue in an interview published Wednesday.

“And that’s the whole reason I started this company, not just to fluff myself, like, ‘I’m a celebrity! People will care what I have to say!’”

As if psychically anticipating this post and others like it, Lively told Vogue that the news would “blow up and I’ll look like a jerk and everyone will be really horrible. And then the new news will come out and I’ll look like a hero and everyone will be really nice, and then the new site will come out and half will be nice and half will be mean again. I mean, Champagne problems — thank God these are the things I get to complain about.”

That “new” news would be that she plans to come back with something else, at some point, when she darn well feels like it, that revisits Preserve’s original mission “to touch millennials through storytelling, and ... create a shoppable lifestyle.” And it probably won’t be called Preserve.

In an April interview with the Los Angeles Times while promoting “Age of Adaline,” Lively acknowledged that the site had some problems, but said she was sticking with it.

“I’m a lot better at this than I am at acting,” she told writer Amy Kaufman, who noted that Lively was being totally serious at the time. “I always feel like I’m faking it when I’m acting. I do the best I can do to tell the story in the best way, but I always feel really lucky when I get a job. I feel confident when I’m cooking or decorating. It’s something I control beginning, middle and end. That ownership feels good.”

The silver lining here? Preserve is having a clearance sale of sorts, and that floral maxi dress is $369.90 instead of $495, the wool and cashmere baby socks are $11.90 a pair instead of $16, and the throw pillow with the butterfly on it — there are several to choose from, actually — is a mere $129.90 instead of, um, $136.

And never fear, the sale includes a one-shouldered butcher’s apron that’s “durable enough for a meat-cutting man, but scaled to fit anybody.” Delightfully, its price has been carved down to $42.90 from $110.

You know how millennials love their meat.

Meanwhile, Lively says, husband Ryan Reynolds has Taylor Swift’s “Shake It Off” playing for her. On repeat.

“I’ve finally summoned the strength to take on whatever anybody says because I know I’m going to come back with something stronger,” she told Vogue. “I’m proud of it and I can take it, because I am a much harder critic on me than any nasty gossip rag. ... I just want to make myself and my family proud.”

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