Mary-Kate & Ashley Olsen (September 2003 - January 2009)

[romantics]

Wow, those pictures of MK having dinner... that's really awful. They should leave her alone.

[wings]

^i actually doubt that it´s mk

[Thefrenchy]

WOW is she wearing a whole purple outfit or am i dreaming?

[misspistol]

If those photos are real, it looks like some member of the public decided to play paparazzi. That's fairly creepy.
Can't see the instyle pic, is it just me?

[satin chic]

I wish MK would wear something shorter and form-fitting for once. I tired of all those baggy dresses

[Harrods Girl]

I think it's just the lighting. The dress looks black. It looks like it's the same dress she was wearing in the photos just a few days ago.

[twin star]

http://timesonline.typepad.com/style...ike-an-ol.html

SHOP LIKE AN OLSEN




Wonderful news! You don’t have to be a junior billionaire to shop like an Olsen. The twins were in London last night to celebrate the arrival of their upmarket fashion line The Row at Harvey Nichols and Mary Kate confessed they had done a TopShop To Go appointment earlier that day (stylists from the store pay a home visit). She was wearing some of her haul to event. Over a jacket from The Row, (which style rebel MK was wearing as a belted mini-dress) she wore TopShop’s white shaggy fur jacket, £65, and TopShop’s platform shoes also £65. Now that these items have been officially blessed by Mary-Kate, how long do you think they will take to sell out? Buy them yourself at www.topshop.com

Later that night (about midnight) the Olsens also went for a private spree in Harvey Nichols (maybe you don’t get a big enough buzz from buying cheap things). They focused on shoes, bulk purchasing heels from Azzedine Alaia, Laurence Dacade and new Brit heel merchant Jonathan Kelsey. Expensive? You bet. That's more like it ladies.

[PetitPuppy]

She loves the sexy Heroin chic...
The outfit of her when she has dinner is wonderful! Especially the purple bag. I would die for having it.

[Diamond Star]

Article from Timesonline.co.uk:

Twin powers
Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen have made so much money they need never work again. But as they're only 21, they've got plans. They tell all about the row
Amy Larocca

In the lobby of the Chateau Marmont, right on time, Mary-Kate Olsen is a kind of uncanny, elfin apparition. She’s wearing gobs of eyeliner, alligator platform stilettos and a black wool coat buttoned up to the neck. She looks like a cross between JT LeRoy and Wednesday Addams. She is fragile and goth, her tiny fingers covered in rings. She’s both glamorous and bohemian, eccentric and studied, and once she enters the room, it’s sort of impossible to look away.

Her look – both an unmistakable signature and a kind of disguise – has been so widely emulated that it’s stunning to see the original in action.

Mary-Kate and her twin sister, Ashley, have been famous their entire lives. They are the rarest of child stars in that they have not grown up ugly, angry or (it seems) insane. They have maintained their preadolescent adorability, with round eyes and faces and little button noses, and they’ve also maintained their mind-boggling fortune. They were only six months old when they were cast in their first role in the popular American sitcom Full House, and before long, were doing megabusiness with television, videos and licensing deals. Their company, Dualstar Entertainment Group, is now America’s No 1-selling fashion and lifestyle brand for girls. In 2004, on their 18th birthday, they assumed decision-making, leadership roles; at that point, the company was doing £600m in sales a year.

The Olsens might have always been sold as wholesome and bright, accessible and mainstream, but as adults, their lives have become much more sophisticated and complicated than their products. They may have been selling Formica bedroom sets in pastel colours, but now they worship Ghesquière. And this season, their contradictions are finally resolved with the launch of their fashion line, The Row, a range far more about who they’re becoming as adults than who they’ve been, in the eyes of the world, for such a long time.

It’s not the usual thing for celebrities of any age to actually have style, personal style, that is unique and individual and achieved on their own. But the Olsens, love it or hate it, do have style; they have it in buckets. And there are subtle differences between them: Mary-Kate might wear 10 kooky rings, Ashley just two or three. But, as Mary-Kate puts it: “If I sleep over at my sister’s, I can definitely get dressed from her closet in the morning.” Their signature look mixes Edie Beale with Balenciaga, Johnny Depp and John Galliano. They don’t wear clothes that are conspicuously slutty, sexy or easy to predict. They mix vintage and new, labels and non. They have raised accessorising to a form of high, glamorous art. If the Olsens’ style resembles anyone at all, it’s not Lindsay Lohan, Mandy Moore or any of their other presumptive peers – they dress more like fashion editors at French Vogue.

The Row consists mainly of expensive knitted T-shirts and a few minimalist separates, including a well-cut blazer and a tight banded miniskirt in the style of Hervé Léger. They are intensely involved with the design process, and the palette is as minimal as the collection: black, white, cream, grey, the occasional shot of red; the label itself is a small, easy-to-miss gold chain embossed “THE ROW”. It is like the Olsens themselves in its desire to be both noticed and hidden.

“I grew up horseback riding,” Mary-Kate says, lighting the first of what will be many Marlboro Reds. “I never even picked up a fashion magazine when I was a kid.” But still, her first fashion show was Marc Jacobs. Then there was a trip to Paris: seeing Balenciaga, Christian Dior and French Vogue editor Carine Roitfeld. “When I really started looking at fashion, I was amazed,” she says. She claims to have arrived at her vampiric European look through a series of accidents. There was the giant-sweater era of her (short-lived) NYU career – “I was just trying to stay warm!” She also insists she was trying to be inconspicuous on her way to class, but the heaped-on layers, the giant sunglasses and the enormous lattes had quite the opposite effect. Every other starlet was showing oodles of flesh, and here was this little gremlin buried under a huge hat. How not to be intrigued?

Mary-Kate left NYU because she didn’t feel safe. She was freaked out by the kids in her class who were selling anecdotes to the tabloids, in some cases even getting credit at school for it. “They would have internships at the weeklies,” she says, adding: “Learning is not fun if you’re not safe.” And her style has evolved since then. Fashion followed her into big coats and glasses, so now she is going small, dressed today in a tiny knitted black dress and well-fitting coat.

Both Olsens insist that they don’t shop much. They like simple, anonymous pieces and loads of accessories. “I love how you can totally change your look by changing your shoes,” Mary-Kate says, and pauses. “Or maybe you don’t look different, and nobody else thinks you look different, but I feel different, anyway.” She laughs the crinkly-nosed, squinty-eyed chipmunk laugh that made her a tween queen, and then announces that she’s off to an audition. “I’m so sorry,” she says a few times, and then she’s gone.

Ashley arrives next, tottering across the garden on her own crazy, crazy shoes: they are sandals, platforms and stilettos all at once. Ashley is still tiny, but somehow more robust than her sister. She was born first, is maybe 2in taller, and her bearing is far more alpha than Mary-Kate’s. Her look is somehow sleeker – giant Christian Dior shades, tight, narrow rubber pants, a tiny leather jacket with little ruched sleeves. Where Mary-Kate takes her soy latte decaf, Ashley asks for a double shot.

Within seconds of sitting (and lighting her Parliament Light), she’s talking business. “This is hands-on,” she says. “It’s production, it’s planning, it’s taking the right steps. It’s everything you need to do to start a business.” She might look like something from a cartoon, but she talks like she’s just stepped out of a Joan Collins boardroom scene.

The Olsens have been businesswomen for years, vetting their merchandising deals at Wal-Mart and elsewhere. But their work – in both fashion and “film” – has never exactly been a reflection of who they were, or the adult lives they had been leading. “When we were growing up, it was always about being appropriate,” Ashley says of the years spent in matching floral party dresses and silly sailor hats. And that’s what their Wal-Mart line reflects. But they’ve grown up to be something other than mainstream and appropriate. College taught Ashley what she wanted to do, but, as is so often the case, inadvertently. “I was studying architecture and psychology and I loved it, but I kept thinking about T-shirts and how to make the perfect one. It was my dad who said, ‘You should do it.’ ” So she called a childhood friend, a designer named Danielle Sherman, and got to work. “That’s what I’m good at,” she says. “Seeing voids.” Ashley says she left NYU because she was ready to do The Row. “Wal-Mart was about the customer,” she says. “It taught us how to be commercial. This is about me and my sister, and what we like to wear.”

The Olsens are aware that their fame, so useful at Dualstar, is liable to be a hindrance with their new line – fashionistas won’t fall over each other to buy £140 T-shirts (minimum) from a young-adult brand. So the Olsen name appears nowhere on the product, and they won’t be photographed in its promotion.

Whether The Row will attract the customers who buy Alaïa and Ghesquière is an open question. But the clothes do, in fact, stand on their own. They are sophisticated, elegant, versatile, understated. In a way, it’s a different tween act – idols to both goofy little girls and snotty fashion ladies. And for all their riches, it’s what they wanted. “I think,” says Mary-Kate, “my sister would be happy selling it out of the back of her car.”

[liberty33r1b]

interesting article!

[satin chic]

I'm pretty sure I've read that article before, but it's still interesting.
I loved this part:

Both Olsens insist that they don’t shop much. They like simple, anonymous pieces and loads of accessories. “I love how you can totally change your look by changing your shoes,” Mary-Kate says, and pauses. “Or maybe you don’t look different, and nobody else thinks you look different, but I feel different, anyway.” She laughs the crinkly-nosed, squinty-eyed chipmunk laugh that made her a tween queen, and then announces that she’s off to an audition.

[rainy_spring]

i think that article was posted a while ago, but it was interesting to read again.

[Diamond Star]

^sorry about that, it was in today's magazine so thought it was new

[Carrme]

very cool article.. Im surprised at the amount of personal interviews they are doing!
its good though

[PetitPuppy]

Yes, I remember reading the talking about riding and smoking marlboro's.