Unlike previous years, Lively was not joined at the event by her husband, Ryan Reynolds, who is on tour promoting Deadpool 2.

Instead, she arrived with Christian Louboutin and Reed Morano, the director of The Handmaids Tale – yet the actress arranged for Reynolds and her family to be present with her on the day.

Her clutch purse, an exclusive custom design by Judith Leiber ,was covered in tiny, multi-coloured rhinestones. The front, in keeping with the gala’s theme of Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination, depicted classic ‘sacred heart’ iconography behind a veiled woman.

The back, though, told a very different story. Looking for all the world like a medieval family crest, it featured a scroll reading “Reynolds”. And, emblazoned across the centre, was a bejewelled cross – each of the four points of which were the letters B, R, J, and I.

As in, yes, the first initials of each member of the Reynolds-Lively family: Blake, Ryan and their daughters, James and Ines.

The secret fashion detail we all missed in Blake Lively’s red carpet outfit