August 27, 2009
Good Things Do Come in Pairs
By CATHY HORYN
“THERE is a certain amount of face time that you need when you have a brand,” Ashley Olsen said. “We just wanted to function more behind the scenes.”
It was a sultry afternoon in August, and Ms. Olsen and her sister Mary-Kate were visiting the production office of The Row, their two-year-old fashion label, on West 39th Street. The Olsens, despite being very rich women, have clearly chosen not to spend money on décor. The furniture is nicked, the windows mossy with grime, and the five employees who share the two-room office have to step around a stack of fabric bolts.
At least a tropical plant on one of the desks offered a bright spot of vitality.
“It’s fake,” Ashley said.
Her sister, the dreamier of the two, looked at the artificial greenery and said in a tone of rising lightness, “The table fell over the other day and the pot didn’t break and I was so mortified and impressed.”
This seems to be the classic response to the Olsen sisters as well. To read blogs devoted to them is to feel a queasiness with the fact of the Olsens — their physical smallness (“the magical millionaire pixies,” as one site refers to them) and, of course, their wayward style (“bad breath and dirty hair,” to quote another). Very few celebrities are either so fascinating or appalling that they manage to get under our skins, as Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen have, and it may be because they are twins. Yet their success in a field as competitive as fashion is impossible to deny. The Olsens, who are 23, have succeeded with two different labels simultaneously — The Row and the hip, less expensive Elizabeth and James — and without formal design training.
Elizabeth and James (named for two Olsen siblings) is produced under a license with L’Koral Industries, a denim and contemporary sportswear maker, and is sold in 300 stores, according to its president, Jane Siskin. The brand expects to double its apparel sales this year.
The Row is really Ashley’s brain-child, though the sisters share responsibilities. Nearly four years ago, while a student at New York University and ducking the paparazzi hired to follow her and her sister everywhere, Ashley gave herself the goal of creating, in her eyes, the perfect T-shirt. That was the concept behind The Row: beautiful but practical clothes whose fit and luxurious texture (T-shirts in sheer cashmere, leggings in stretch leather) had private meaning to the people who wore them.
Most good designers are mad for fit, and true-blue fashion consumers make choices on that basis, but the Olsens saw fit as a kind of ruthlessly modern sensibility. Their chaste black blazer, for example, has a high armhole because the Olsens liked the way Paris couture jackets fit, with high armholes and narrow sleeves that make your arms look even skinnier and longer. Being small, about five feet tall, they have always had a thing about proportion.
Even though four or five years ago, Mary-Kate and Ashley were the biggest names in tween clothing, thanks to a deal with Wal-Mart, today they’re practically aesthetes.
With The Row outperforming many better-known labels, beleaguered retailers can’t help gushing over the Olsens. The company expects annual sales to be 30 percent higher than last year, and Ashley said the line, which recently added men’s wear, will break even this year. The company’s total sales are estimated at $10 million, company officials say.
“To enter the designer apparel arena and build something, that’s significant,” said Jim Gold, the chief executive of Bergdorf Goodman, which carries the Olsens’ label. “I think the way to think about The Row is that it offers the perfect blank — the perfect schoolboy blazer, the perfect leather leggings, the perfect peacoat. So many designers are intent on the next great trend that some of the basics are neglected.”
“Perfect” was also the word that Julie Gilhart, the fashion director of Barneys New York, used to describe the Olsens’ timing. She noted that even before the recession forced a change in spending habits, more and more women were seeking high-quality pieces that didn’t go out of fashion. (For that reason, Barneys and other stores generally do not put The Row on sale. Prices range from about $200 for some of the T-shirts to $3,000 for coats, with the top-selling blazer at Bergdorf’s at $1,150.)
“I don’t think anybody really cares that it’s Mary-Kate and Ashley’s collection,” Ms. Gilhart said. “They’re buying it because they like it.”
Maybe, but you can’t help wondering how this particular fashion success story was written by two former child stars, and not by a designer with years of experience. And that may be the explanation: the Olsen sisters don’t seem to acknowledge the conventional barriers to success, beginning with their famous name. After all, they detached their names from the brand. “The customer who buys the clothes almost never knows we’re involved,” Ashley said.
And though Ashley, the alpha sister, came to the meeting in the production office dressed in a plaid cashmere shirt from The Row’s fall line and a black miniskirt, the label can’t be said to reflect the Olsens’ wildly random style — sometimes, perhaps uncharitably, called Dumpster chic. Mary-Kate, her eyebrows bleached, had on a vintage black leather skirt with a long-sleeve print T-shirt that she last wore, she said, about eight years ago.
“The majority of our customers are 35 to 60,” Ashley said. “Yeah, I wear a lot of stuff because it’s basic. It’s that ageless design that we try to focus on, but it’s not defined by one of us.”
Mary-Kate added, “Also, I think you design things because maybe it’s not you.” She paused. “I have my own pet peeves about things that I don’t wear.”
Like what?
Ashley started to laugh.
“Like tank tops,” Mary-Kate said.
“You’ll never see her in a tank top,” Ashley said.
Her sister, who vaguely, surprisingly, has the face of a 1930s film star — Harlow with bed hair —prefers to be covered up. “So sometimes,” Mary-Kate said, “you design something that you die to wear or love to see somebody else wear.”
It’s also true that the Olsens have the luxury of choice. Unlike most young designers, they are enormously wealthy. Forbes estimated their earnings in 2008 at $15 million. They have been working since they were 9 months old, first sharing the role of Michelle Tanner on the popular sitcom “Full House” and then as entrepreneurs of their own cutesy image. By 2005, when the sisters assumed the leadership of their company, Dualstar Entertainment Group, and bought out their partner, Mary-Kate and Ashley products — videos, makeup, clothing, dolls — were said to generate $1.2 billion in retail sales.
Jill Collage, the executive vice president of Dualstar, said that the company’s new ventures, like Elizabeth and James, reflect the Olsens’ growing up. Ms. Collage, who has worked with the sisters since she was their on-set guardian, declined to reveal sales numbers.
And yet, almost perversely, the atmosphere in The Row’s cramped office on 39th Street is old school — before big brands, indeed before celebrity. The Olsens and their production manager, Joe Karban, a veteran of a number of designer studios, including Ralph Lauren’s, schlep to the sewing rooms and patternmakers in the garment district. (The label is produced entirely in New York, mostly with Italian fabrics.) And while the sisters may attend the odd fashion show, they are not interested in staging their own.
“It’s much like the old days at Polo,” Mr. Karban said. “The kids on the team are really passionate about making clothes. How do you set a proper sleeve? How does a fabric perform? It’s the art of making clothes as opposed to making everything cookie-cutter. Plus everything Mary-Kate and Ashley do turns to gold. Lots of people in the industry are worried about their excess inventory. My reorder business is phenomenal.”
People who know the Olsens say they have uncanny instincts for what the stylishly obsessed want. “There’s no God that said, ‘Create a high-end label and not have your name attached to it,’ ” said a friend, Alex Hawgood, who works as a creative consultant on The Row (and formerly was an editorial assistant at The New York Times Magazine). “That was 100 percent their decision.”
The Olsens don’t do many interviews, but in recent ones they have brought up, almost coyly, the perception that they don’t work and are lollygagging around with their boyfriends (Mary-Kate dates the artist Nate Lowman; Ashley goes out with the actor Justin Bartha). The sisters, in fact, work very hard, but this slightly scripted moment of self-effacement is meant to serve a larger point: they want you to know they don’t really care what people think of them.
Mary-Kate and Ashley are older than their years. Everyone says so.
“I think Ashley has an old soul,” said Ms. Siskin, their partner in Elizabeth and James. “That’s really what it is. She’s not as good with the whole celebrity thing as people might think. She’s longs for a bit of a normal life.”
And Mary-Kate, who continues to seek out acting jobs, is adept at channeling glamour in a cool way; it was really Mary-Kate’s boho layers and oversize glasses that inspired a generational look.
But they are still 23.
“Listen, I used to be in the entertainment industry,” Ashley said. “I decided at 18 that I don’t really want to do this anymore. I wanted to explore other things, and with that came The Row.” She looked across the table at her sister and for a moment their eyes locked.
She continued: “Our lives have been kind of backward. We never got that opportunity in high school to figure out what you want to do. We never had the time to discover, ‘Oh, I love doing this ...’ So for us this experience in fashion has been amazing.”
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