Grace Gummer on Balenciaga, Caroline Kennedy, and Personal Style

Like the Mannings of football and the Roosevelts of Washington, Grace Gummer is part of a big-time family business. Little sister Louisa is the star of The Gilded Age; big sister Mamie is filming season 2 of We Were Liars, and…well…her mom is Meryl Streep.

But although Gummer is literally related to Miranda Priestly, the 39-year-old actress—who shares two small children with music producer Mark Ronson—is actually the original fashion junkie in the family. “Fashion always fascinated me,” says Gummer via phone from a flea market in Paris. “Style always seemed like a tool on how to tell stories,” she continues. “I think I was hooked even as a kid.”

While abroad in college, Gummer studied costume design at Tirelli Costumi, the Roman atelier that made dresses for Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette and Maleficent. Then she worked under Anne Roth, who created gowns for Marilyn Monroe. (Roth also appeared as the older woman on the bench in Barbie, which is pretty great.) Later, Gummer interned for Zac Posen. Even her first professional acting gig was meant to be a fashion job: In 2008, she was slated to be a costume design assistant for an Off-Broadway play but ended up auditioning and booking the lead.

This month, Gummer’s fashion background, acting chops, and high-profile reality all collide in Love Story, which has her playing another famous family daughter—Caroline Kennedy—while wearing vintage ’90s pieces from Michael Kors and Valentino. She’s also been promoting the show with some key front row appearances, including yesterday’s Balenciaga show. “Naomi [Watts, her Love Story co-star] and I kept pointing at the dresses on the runway and saying, ‘I’ll fight you for it!’” she said.

Here’s how Gummer first became a Balenciaga girl, what goes down in the Love Story group chat, and whether there might be a Meryl Streep biopic in the works. (Spoiler alert: “Oh no.”)

It’s the morning after the Balenciaga show. What still sticks out in your mind?

Besides that it was so much fun? I just think [designer Pierpaolo Piccioli] is such a master, especially with dresses. His draping is so impeccable—I gasped every time a dress came down the runway. Did you know he made my wedding dress? It was when he was at Valentino.

That’s pretty major.

I told you, I’ve always been a fashion girl. [Laughs.] But look, I wasn’t in the atelier in Paris or Milan or anything like that with him. We were back and forth through emails mostly, and through the rest of his team. I showed him reference pictures of what I was thinking and what my vibe was—I wanted a cape instead of a veil, and he just nailed it. It was ethereal, like frolicking through the countryside but elevated, feminine, gorgeous, gauzy. He draped the cape so it sort of fell off my shoulders and was connected to the dress, so it flowed behind me in the wind. We got married upstate at our house, and I was walking down a hill overlooking a lake. It was this perfect, ivory, pearly color. It was magical. So I was really happy to see him at the show—I really love him as a person.

You worked for the legendary costume designer Anne Roth and at Tirelli, which did the costumes for Marie Antoinette. What was that like?

I was doing very rudimentary, low-on-the-totem-pole work—steaming hats, sewing on buttons, making hems—which I actually really loved and learned a lot from. I speak Italian, so I would go to the warehouse they have outside of Rome. It’s like a football field of costumes. I would just roam the aisles and look at everything. You’d pass a row of opera costumes and then go, “Wait, that’s The English Patient. That’s Titanic!”

So it’s just you hanging out with Jack and Rose’s costumes. Casual. And then you interned at Zac Posen?

It was right before Michael Jackson died, and I helped make a leather jacket that Zac was designing for him. That was a…well, a very intense time.

How does all this experience with fashion shape your work as an actress?

It really informs everything I do. I find the character as I’m sitting in the fitting room. I sort of build the world of the woman I’m playing as I’m figuring out what she would put on in the morning. It’s a really important piece of the puzzle for me.

Sitting front row with Love Story co-star Naomi Watts and her daughter, Kai Schreiber.

How about in Love Story specifically?

There was this one piece I found at one of my first fittings—a vintage Valentino striped shirt from the late 1980s—that so summed up who she was at that time. It has a little bit of a shoulder, buttons all the way to the top, the most beautiful fit. It’s one of those things that can’t be replicated now. The moment I put it on, I was like, “Oh, here she is.” She buttons the cuffs, always, and buttons it all the way to the top. Together, classy, elegant, old world, but with this spirit. Everybody talks about Caroline’s style—I think she had impeccable style, and still does.

Did you expect the show to become this big of a phenomenon?

We knew people would like it, but we didn’t know it would be a global phenomenon. We all have a group chat together, and we’re like, “Okay, what is going on?”

What happens in the Love Story group chat?

We root for each other, mostly. But we use the head-exploding emoji all the time, because this is just getting so big, and we’re honestly just really thrown by it. We use that, we use the heart-eye emoji a lot, and then the one with the tongue hanging out, because all the red carpets and the promotions—it’s amazing, but we’re really just shocked.

What if Ryan Murphy made a Meryl Streep biopic? Would you be into it?

I just don’t know if that would happen, right?! Because my upbringing was nowhere near public. The thing about the Kennedys is there’s always been this lore about them, this mist in the American era that is so intriguing and will constantly be huge on the public stage. It always has been. People are always fascinated with them. And no one is immune to an ill-fated love story. I think we really, really need that right now.

Gummer and Watts as Caroline Kennedy and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis in Love Story.

Your husband has been a producer for Dua Lipa and Miley Cyrus. Being around so many music people, has that changed your style at all?

If anything, I’ve changed Mark’s style. He very quickly figured out, “Oh, okay, this is what we’re supposed to be doing.” Just a bit more elevated, I guess. But actually, he has this guy in Japan who sources the most amazing vintage shirts and sends Mark a pile of them every few years—old tour tees, things you really can’t find anywhere…so he’s given me this rock-and-roll side of fashion. I’m also obsessed with Bonnie Raitt and really want to play her in a movie one day. [On] one of our first dates, he got me a Bonnie Raitt record and a vintage Bonnie Raitt T-shirt.

Can we get a fit check for your Paris flea market shopping outfit?

Right now I am wearing a coat by The Row. The blouse is The Row. The sneakers are The Row. I know, I have a mental illness. Wait, the jeans are Dries Van Noten. Isn’t that different? Very old Dries Van Noten.

Oh my God.

I told you, this is my thing!

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This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Hair by Blake Erik; makeup by Zoe Taylor.