Just over a year after the launch of the lifestyle brand Preserve, founder Blake Lively intends to shutter the site and retool the project to reflect her original vision.
It's official: @BlakeLively is closing @Preserve_Us: http://t.co/7Fn5Dxq7Rn— Vogue Magazine (@voguemagazine) September 30, 2015
Lively launched preserve in July of 2014 -- earlier than planned, she has said, in conjunction with a Vogue cover story. In hindsight, the actress has admitted that she wished she had waited six months before taking the site live. Preserve has been the subject of much media scrutiny, and Lively knows she will face the same criticism until and beyond the site’s Oct. 9 closing.
“I know what it’ll look like, what I’m facing publicly, that people are just going to have a heyday with this,” she told Vogue in a story about the site's closure. "But it’s so much worse to continue to put something out there -- to ask my team to put something out there -- that isn’t the best we can do. I’m going to take this hit, and the only way I can prove all the negative reactions wrong is to come back with a plan that will rock people. And I have that plan.”
Preserve is -- well, it’s a little unclear what Preserve is, which may be part of the problem. While other Hollywood personalities like Reese Witherspoon and Gwyneth Paltrow have launched brand and lifestyle websites with clear markets, Preserve aims to showcase makers and artisans as much as their products.
"We’re not creating a lifestyle,” the website says. “We’re just sharing a collection of the best things we know."
If any of those things resonate, most of them are currently on sale before the closure. Lively, meanwhile, is prepared for more media criticism.
“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.”
Ah, the struggles of life in the public eye.