Blake Lively

Blake Lively - best known for her turn as  New York's best dressed teenaged socialite, Serena van der Woodsen, and more recently for marrying Ryan Reynolds - has returned to the red carpet in a major way. She announced her arrival in sparkling form on the Met Gala red carpet - famously proclaiming she channels Gisele for red carpet events - and rapidly followed up her Met Gala gorgeousness with ever more triumphant appearances at Cannes.





Glittering in Gucci at the Met Gala

Upstaging basically everyone at Cannes with a dazzling array of couture gowns, Blake not only cemented her position on best-dressed lists everywhere, she also brought back boobs (real ones, or at least not enormous fake-looking ones) as a covetable feature of the female form.





In Gucci again at Cannes

In the waist-defining Chanel dress

The curvy figure hasn't enjoyed a fashion renaissance since what felt like, well... the Renaissance. With a brief resurgence of curves during peak Mad Men hysteria, buxom breasts quickly shrunk back to fashion's stock-in-trade waif and nymphette frames. Female models aren't quite as dramatically slim as 90s-era cocaine chic, but they remain sufficiently skinny for us to empty our pantries of choc chip biscuits and rue the days our parents bestowed us with B+ cupped chests. With 14C now the average bust size in Australia and the USA, I think it is suffice to say that the flat-chested dream is more accurately the exception rather than the reality.

Check out this fascinating map of average cup sizes globally. Holy Russia!

The fact is that breasts dramatically change how an item of clothing hangs, causing much angst in dressing rooms globally as shirts and dresses somehow defy glossy promotional pages' promises, and we are left with a front that is shorter than we may hope for, or the desired silhouette is simply unattainable. I'm still not entirely sure why we desire that ruler-shaped look, but we do. To the peril of Cherry Ripes and Magnum ice creams everywhere.


So I'm rather heartened by Blake Lively's proudly curvaceous red carpet appearances, and again I hope we see healthier and more diverse body shapes accounted for by couture designers and appearing on catwalks. The Devil Wears Prada very succinctly explained how it is that couture guides our mass-fashion clothing options, so it is essential designers get on board the Boob-exalting Express.



Magnificent in Gucci