The funny woman’s stylist
Grice, who dresses several ‘SNL’ cast members, leans toward unusual yet ‘incredibly beautiful’ clothes
Of all the places a person might feel at home in her clothes, the Academy Awards show does not immediately come to mind. The Oscars are the pinnacle of celebrity theater, with attendees buffed to superhuman levels of glamour and sheathed in couture gowns.
But Maya Rudolph wasn’t dressed like most attendees at the awards show in 2018. In a sea of sequins and flowing trains, the actress and “Saturday Night Live” alumna stood out in a bright red Valentino turtleneck jumpsuit with wide legs and loose sleeves that tapered at the wrist, her hair parted down the middle and slicked into a low bun, with a pair of dangly Irene Neuwirth earrings framing her face. She looked bold and glamorous, but also comfortable.
It was, Rudolph said, the first time she felt like herself on the red carpet. Not coincidentally, it also was her first time working with stylist Rebecca Grice, who has dressed her for public appearances ever since.
“The stuff we connect on is usually the stuff that we’re both kind of wincing at with one eye, going, ‘That’s sick,’ ” Rudolph said in a phone interview. Words like “twisted” and “witchy” also tend to come up in their sessions. They go for looks that have a wink to them — outfits that, Rudolph said, are “not typically what you expect to see, and yet so incredibly beautiful.”
For the better part of a decade, Grice, 39, has been cultivating a clientele that leans noticeably toward women who, like Rudolph, are professionally funny. Her roster includes several “SNL” players past and present — Aidy Bryant, Kate McKinnon, Vanessa Bayer — as well as the Haim sisters Este, Danielle and Alana (best known for their music but also notably hilarious). Each has a distinct style, but Grice, across her body of work, seems inclined to make a statement in the most low-key way possible, a welcome retreat, perhaps, from the wigs, goofy costumes and stage makeup of a sketch comic’s work life.
“Rebecca has a relaxed quality to all her styling,” Bryant said. “There’s kind of a ‘What’s the big deal?’ feeling about all of her outfits, even when it’s what is on paper kind of a frilly dress.”
Since she started working with Grice, Bryant often wears what could be described as frilly dresses, particularly ones by Simone Rocha, an Irish designer whose voluminous, ruffled silhouettes evoke a subversive kind of femininity. A floaty pink dress with cartoon-princess sleeves and a dainty floral pattern is a head-turning look, but it’s also the kind of dress that accommodates reclining on Seth Meyers’ couch. Bryant values a sense of normalcy in dressing for appearances. “I like to feel like I’m one step away from my everyday self,” she said.
Grice doesn’t have a tidy philosophy about styling professionally funny women. But speaking over Zoom in January from her home in Los Angeles, she noted one tenet: “Comfort is key, and comfort is confidence.”
The capacity to remain calm through fashion hiccups and global lockdowns may be innate for Grice, but it has also been honed over many years in the fashion industry. After graduating from Elon University in North Carolina, Grice moved to New York and landed at InStyle magazine, where she struggled to churn out 25-word blurbs on matters like day-to-night outfit transitions but learned what she considers foundational professional skills: hitting deadlines, communicating with PR people at labels and managing editors’ schedules.
She eventually left magazines and began to work for stylist Lori Goldstein. “I feel like I’m classically trained by one of the greats,” Grice said. Under Goldstein, she learned how to grind through grueling photo shoots and worked with Steven Meisel, Mario Sorrenti, and Inez and Vinoodh. Grice’s introduction to celebrity styling came through Mel Ottenberg, with whom Grice connected after leaving Goldstein’s team and who had recently started working with Rihanna.
“Working for Mel exposed me to music videos, to red carpets, to ad campaigns,” Grice said. It also led to a solo gig styling
Haim, then an emerging band. Rudolph met Grice in 2017, while her partner, Paul Thomas Anderson, was directing a short film for Haim; he wrote the lead role in his most recent film, “Licorice Pizza,” for Alana. Maya Erskine, of the painfully realistic middleschool comedy “PEN15,” also connected with Grice through the Haim sisters. They went to the same high school in Los Angeles.
Haim’s looks tend to have a loose ease that comes off as both very Californian and very rock ‘n’ roll.
In public appearances, the sisters express their individuality while dressing cohesively, often in
the same brand or with rhyming textures and color palettes. “She has an incredible eye for knowing what fits in our world,” they wrote of Grice in a joint email. “We are a band with three people with three different styles and she somehow fits us three puzzle pieces together to make something great.”
When Alana Haim started her press tour for “Licorice Pizza,” her debut film, Grice avoided looks that seemed typical of a bright-eyed ingénue. “Wearing gowns and dresses is new for me, but we both wanted to make sure that I was still me, just with a dress train,” Haim
wrote in an email.
They went for Louis Vuitton trousers under a transparent skirt; draped, long-sleeve Loewe; a cutout lime green and gray ensemble by Nina Ricci; and, for “The Tonight
Show With Jimmy Fallon,” a baggy camel suit from the Row with a turtleneck underneath. That last look, which Grice said reminded her of Katharine Hepburn, seemed particularly emblematic of the stylist’s approach: comfortable, cool and designed primarily for the woman wearing it.
“I don’t know if everyone understood it,” Grice said. “But I loved it.”