'Gossip Girl' Star Lively Tries On Chanel at Night

April 29, 2008 — -- Nothing comes between Blake Lively and Chanel.

Not a brutal "Gossip Girl" shooting schedule, which had her on set starting at 4 a.m. and then going to a 9 p.m. dinner Monday. And not a steady, day-long downpour, which might have kept less hardy fashion fans at home.

So Lively, accompanied by her co-star and rumored beau Penn Badgley, turned up for the annual Tribeca Film Festival dinner thrown by Chanel. Each year, it's held at a hot venue and this time, it was at Ago, in the new, ultra-pricey, just-opened Greenwich Hotel co-owned by festival co-founder Robert De Niro.

"I love clothes. Chanel is it for me. It's the top of the top. It's so silly how happy Chanel makes me," gushed Lively, clad, of course, in a Chanel frock. "I own way too much. People have to intervene in my life -- my business manager, my publicist and my friends tell me I have to stop going to Chanel."

Her most recent splurges? "I have lots of beautiful handbags, but I bought a pair of gloves there -- they were so beautiful and I was obsessing over them for so long. Gloves are something, living in New York, that I need. They're fancy. If I lost one of them, I'd hate myself forever."

She says fans of her CW show (Mondays, 8 p.m. ET/PT) have something to look forward to. You'll finally learn what drives Lively's character, Serena van der Woodsen. "My character goes down a dark path. Her deep, hidden secret is finally revealed," promises Lively.

The Chanel event was smaller this year, but still attracted some boldfaced names. Two little girls asked Liam Neeson, accompanied by wife Natasha Richardson, for autographs. As always, Mary-Kate Olsen sidestepped interviews, preferring to stick to her friends. And Ed Burns turned up with wife Christy Turlington; the couple live right across from the hotel and just walked across the street to the dinner.

Turlington was also, naturally, in Chanel. "I had too much as a young woman and now, I'm borrowing from my young woman's wardrobe. Although the skirts are far too short," said Turlington. "I never feel comfortable in them."

She's a model, he's an actor-director. So, which of their two kids is the entertainer in the family? "Our daughter, but she's shy," says Turlington of Grace, 4. "The camera comes out and she turns her back. But for us, she's a huge entertainer. There might be some issues we have to work on but that's OK, I'd prefer she works on her inner life a little bit more."