35-year-old child actresses-turned-fashion designers, Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen, gave i-D a very rare interview.
Mary-Kate and Ashley spoke primarily about their fashion line The Row, which they started in 2016, but also addressed their preference to live discreetly and what working together and running a company as twins is like.
“We’re a bit out of practice,” Mary-Kate warned the outlet when they started their interview. i-D revealed they don’t have social media or shop online.
When discussing The Row’s design aesthetic, Mary-Kate said, “We were raised to be discreet people.”
Ashley added, “I think that potentially that’s just our aesthetic, our design preference. But that doesn’t mean that we don’t also appreciate something truly ornate or maximal. Sometimes a collection even starts quite like that, and then gets pared down. It doesn’t always start from that simplistic place.”
Ashley spoke about not wanting the two to be very obviously connected to the line. “We really didn’t want to be in front of it,” she said. “We didn’t necessarily even want to let people know it was us, in a way. I mean, it was one of those things where it was really about the product, to the point where we’re like, ‘Who could we get to kind of front this so we don’t have to?’ I think, to this day, you’ll see we really put the product first.”
On working together with their twin collection, Ashely added, “We like working together and we like having that dialogue. I think it helps harden your ideas to be able to hear them out loud, to speak something through. You know, we definitely go by intuition and instinct and it can either confirm that feeling, or if we’re both not feeling right about something, for some reason, we just don’t do it.”
“Our instincts are kind of the same. But I think what’s great is that we have each other to lean on. And managing design is one thing and then also running the business side is another and I think you have a lot of decisions to make. I mean, when you put those two things together, there’s a lot of decisions to make on a daily basis, so I think we feel fortunate that we can have that dialogue and divide and conquer a bit,” Ashley concluded.
You can read their full interview here.
