Greta Lee is (literally) Mother

At her very first Golden Globes, Greta Lee arrived standing upright in a golf cart, “screaming [her] head off.” It’s a less than expected entrance to an actor’s preliminary big-name awards show, especially in her debut season as a nominee—but it is an image that goes some way towards explaining what makes Lee so compellingly watchable.

Where do you know Greta Lee from? Where don’t you know Greta Lee from—the actor has had quippy, friend-of-the-protagonist roles in HBO’s Girls, Apple TV+’s The Morning Show, and the Natasha Lyonne-helmed Russian Doll on Netflix, all of which were a prelude to her breakout lead role in Celine Song’s directorial debut, Past Lives (2023), which entered awards season this year as a firm audience favourite.

In the last few years, awards seasons have seen many an A24 darling—Uncut Gems (2019), Everything Everywhere All At Once (2022), The Whale (2022), to name just a few—but none has produced a star whose presence on a red carpet prompts the gays to scream “Mother!” in unison quite like Ms Greta Lee.

At 40, she is a mother of two who has more in common with her Past Lives character than she does with any of her previous zany, life-of-the-party roles. Nora is a Canadian-Korean playwright who returns to Seoul and reunites with her childhood love 24 years after her parents first left South Korea, stirring up uncertainties in her otherwise stable life. In real life, Lee was born and raised in Los Angeles and was the first among her Korean immigrant family to become an American citizen. The echoes between her reality and role gave her performance a lot of depth and it paid off in the response to the film and her work in it. Suddenly, Lee had arrived.

If Celine Song was her on-set collaborator in success, on the red carpet, that role has been played by her stylist, Danielle Goldberg, and Loewe’s Jonathan Anderson. The partnership with Anderson feels like a match made in fashion heaven, given how the designer’s asymmetrical, sculptural style has paired so seamlessly with Lee’s propensity to bring a restrained drama to her sartorial choices. The actor has professed a deep appreciation for Anderson’s “genius”, pointing to the “timelessness and nostalgia” that exist at once within his designs. In a testament to this designer-muse relationship, Lee accompanied Anderson to the CFDA Fashion Awards in 2023, where, fittingly, she handed him his International Designer of the Year award.

Their partnership has woven itself into the contemporary fashion tapestry so organically that it prompted The New York Times’ Vanessa Friedman to pretty much predict Lee’s Oscars dress pick while watching the Loewe presentation at this year’s New York Fashion Week. And at the Met Gala in New York, just a few days ago, Lee wore a sculpted white Loewe dress that was both rigidly constructed and somehow cloud-like. “I was so struck by this thing that Loewe and Jonathan [do] like no one else,” she told Vogue. “It’s this incredible sculptural shape, that somehow has this contrast between really strong and also very soft and vulnerable and feminine.”

But far be it for us to suggest that Lee is predictable—there is little chance of that with Goldberg around. Prior to her celebrity styling career, Goldberg cut her fashion teeth at Vogue and T Magazine, and now counts red-carpet standouts such as Ayo Edebiri of The Bear fame as clients. Lee and Goldberg first met on set at a TV show, but began working together years later, around the time the actor was preparing to do press for Russian Doll. Lee was pregnant at the time, Goldberg put her in a floral Balenciaga mini shift dress, and the two have never looked back.

At a time when awards show fashion has been universally declared to be in a slump, Lee’s appearances have retained a freshness that feels thoughtful and considered.

Nor should they—Lee’s current turn on the red carpet with Goldberg at her side is the stuff of (future) fashion legend. When it comes to pulling off a look, the actor punches far above her weight and has quickly earned the kind of sartorial reputation that puts her in the ring with icons of the game like Rihanna, Cher, or Björk—in that she has developed a patently signature style that is surprising and innovative, but also instantly recognisable. Aside from her many celebrated outings in Loewe, consider her metallic Proenza Schouler frock at the New York screening of Past Lives in 2023 and the striking Bottega Veneta look she took to the 2024 Governor’s Awards. Both of these illustrate the actor’s ability to play with androgyny and gender-fluid silhouettes in a way that feels both novel and organic.

“Greta can carry fashion that isn’t easy and make it look effortless,” Goldberg told The New York Times, and it is this sense of perceived ease that makes Lee’s style so enjoyable. At a time when awards show fashion has been universally declared to be in a slump, her appearances have retained a freshness that feels thoughtful and considered. The actor has spoken about how, growing up, she saw dressing up as “a form of peaceful protest”. The adult version of that rebellious streak has informed her playfully composed style, which spends as much time rooted in the past as it does looking forward. It’s clear that the world should be paying attention to Greta Lee, but also that she isn’t here for the eyeballs or the Twitter memes. Calling her relationship with Goldberg “the dreamiest collaboration”, she added that when they pick a look, it’s “for no one other than us.”