Blake Lively Graces Cover of Vogue

Gossip Girl star Blake Lively is on the cover and featured inside the February 2009 issue of Vogue, in which one of the show's leading ladies dons some seriously amazing dresses.

To say she looks stunning doesn't do it justice ...

Click to enlarge more Blake Lively pictures from the Vogue photo shoot below, then follow the jump to read an excerpt from the magazine's story on the show ...

When Vogue first caught up with Lively, she was filming a scene in which Serena van der Woodsen was to saunter down East 61st Street with her sunny insouciance, but Blake instead was stooped and pale-green with the stomach flu.

Shivering in the dank November rain, Lively stood as a makeup woman spritzed her cascade of blonde hair. Her teeth chattered as she wanly assured a concerned member of the film crew, "It's OK; I just need to go to the doctor."

A production assistant plucked the oversize down coat from her shoulders, and in a black Marc Jacobs overcoat and Té Casan teal suede boots, Lively sauntered while delivering sisterly advice to Serena's younger brother, Eric, without a hitch.

In the cinematographer's misty, romanticized frame, Serena was as rosily aglow as ever, and so were the town houses in the background.

The lens cropped the Upper East Side down to its most stately and prosperous lines, with no trace of the glaring RETAIL SPACE AVAILABLE signs and GOING OUT OF BUSINESS SALE posters one block away, signals that the worldwide recession is lapping at the edges of Manhattan's most privileged ZIP codes.

Now halfway through Season Two, Gossip Girl has the ability to make New York City, whatever the meteorological or economic climate, appear, like Serena, dazzling and worldly and optimistic - if, indeed, a bit preposterous.

This is, after all, a series that presents high school swathed in all the perks of adulthood (sex, cash, alcohol) and adulthood stripped of financial cares or parental responsibilities ("Vanya the doorman used to sign our permission slips from school," Eric reminds his mother, Lily, when Lily tries to argue she wasn't really so neglectful).

And it's a show that works for adolescents and parents alike, which is hardly surprising—generation gaps are becoming increasingly obsolete in a society where, on-screen and off-, youngsters grow up too fast and parents refuse to act or look their age.

It's a nighttime cocktail of a soap, served up dry, with a strong dash of satire.

Continue reading this article in Vogue ...