The Olsen twins' new fashion lines
Last Updated: 12:01am GMT 09/03/2008
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By the age of ten Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen, the actresses-cum-
global brand, were the youngest self-made millionaires in American
history. A decade on, with no need ever to work again, isn't it time
they put their feet up? Not with a new clothing line about to hit
Britain, they tell Maria Rose. Photograph by Tina Barney
Ashley Olsen has a cold. It's a warm February morning in New York and
the teensy-weensy 21-year-old actress-turned-merchandising-mogul-
turned-fashion-phenomenon is curled up in a wing chair at a chic
private club, nursing a cup of tea. 'I'm so sorry,' she says
hoarsely, after recovering from a coughing fit. 'It was fashion week
that did me in. Too many people in too small a space.' And with that
she starts again: cough, sniffle, cough, sigh……


Fashion, as Olsen is finding out, is an exhausting business. She and
her sister Mary-Kate, who is showing up in an hour, as the girls
prefer to be interviewed separately - 'its just easier that way,'
explains their publicist, who sits protectively nearby - have
launched two high-end clothing lines in the past two years: a
minimalist-chic collection called the Row and the slightly lower-
priced brand, Elizabeth and James, which makes its British debut at
Selfridges this month.
'The Olsens certainly have more style credibility than the other
American starlets of their generation,' says Perushka Dezoysa,
Selfridges' contemporary-womenswear buyer. 'The collection covers a
lot of bases, from amazing plume vests to comfy trousers. And really,
it was a very good way for us to tap into the Olsen magic.'
In America that Olsen magic has been a familiar commodity for two
decades. When Mary-Kate and Ashley were nine months old their mother,
a former ballet dancer, sent photographs of her babies to a casting-
director friend for a lark. The girls' overall adorableness - the
great big eyes, button noses and chubby cheeks were there from the
beginning - and the fact that they rarely cried or fussed landed them
the shared role of Michelle Tanner in the sitcom Full House.
The show was a big hit, running for eight years. But its success
isn't what turned the Olsens into superstars. What set Mary-Kate and
Ashley apart was what they did when the cameras weren't rolling.

When the twins were six their manager, Robert Thorne, set up the
Dualstar Entertainment Group, which produced dozens of direct-to-
video, fictionalised Mary-Kate and Ashley films with titles like
You're Invited to Mary-Kate and Ashley's Birthday Party. The tapes
pulled in hundreds of millions in just over a decade. Soon there were
Mary-Kate and Ashley dolls, furniture, books, make-up, even
toothpaste.
The Mary-Kate and Ashley brand of girls clothing remains a hugely
profitable enterprise for Dualstar and came about because fans wanted
to know where to buy the outfits the Olsens wore on screen. The
answer wasn't so easy. Instead of dressing the twin stars in off-the-
rack children's clothes, costumers were purchasing grown-up designer
threads - would you believe Chanel and Marc Jacobs? For nine-year-
olds? - and cutting them down to mini-me size. 'We got a big box of
Marc Jacobs once, and they were size fours,' remembers Ashley. 'They
were so big we had to chop them into thirds. That's when I started
becoming aware of fashion and fit, of the idea that this is a "nice"
skirt or a "special" jacket.'
Dualstar almost single-handedly opened retailers' eyes to an
enormously lucrative segment of the buying public: the tween market.
Young enough to get excited by starlet-branded lipgloss and old
enough to ask for it by name, these eight- to 12-year-old girls made
Dualstar a $1-billion-a-year enterprise. At ten Mary-Kate and Ashley
became the youngest self-made millionaires in American history. And
on their 18th birthday they were handed control of the company,
making them among the richest teenagers in the world; estimates of
their net worth come in at about $150 million each.
It's easy to assume their vast wealth was presented to them on a
silver tray while they lolled around their mansion, eating bonbons.
But the truth is, while they were no doubt blessed with amazing
opportunities, the twins have earned their keep. 'I've been sitting
in on meetings since I was ten or 11,' says Ashley, who, when she
gets started can take on the deliberate tone of a marketing
lecturer. 'We want to like what our names are on, so it was important
that we paid attention, on a day-to-day basis, to what was happening.'
Ashley now recognises that her early interest in balance sheets might
have been unusual, although both girls remain close to their parents
and make a point of saying that their childhood in Culver City,
California, was 'really normal', with school and dance classes and
riding lessons and chores. 'When you're 13 or 14 you always think
you're older than you are,' she says. 'Now, I look at other teenagers
and think, "What was my problem? " But at the end of the day we own
our company. We run it. It's not a game.'

For Ashley business is now a full-time job. She's put her acting
career on hold so that she can devote all of her energy to her money-
making ventures, fashion and otherwise. 'I'd love to be a hundred
places at once but I can't be,' she says. 'I'm a CEO and I can't not
be present.'
Mary-Kate, however, is still pursuing Hollywood dreams. Her latest
project, a quirky independent film called The Wackness, won an award
at the recent Sundance Film Festival, and she's also had a recurring
role in the acclaimed black-comedy series Weeds. 'I'm always reading
scripts, auditioning,' she says when she shows up for her portion of
the interview, also stuffy-nosed and coughing. 'I didn't realise
until I was in college that I really liked acting,' she says. 'It was
just something that I'd always done. But once I started studying it I
fell in love.'
The twins' first foray into high fashion, the Row, which launched in
America in spring 2006, was, not surprisingly, Ashley's idea. 'All I
wanted was the perfect T-shirt,' she recalls. 'I just sketched out
what I wanted, bought some bad fabric and took it to a couple of
manufacturers.'

The resulting top, a loose-fitting silk-mix number with just one
seam, no tags and a neckline that falls somewhere between a V and a
scoop, was originally intended for her own wardrobe, and maybe for a
few friends, 'but then Maxfield [a Los Angeles boutique] wanted it
and Barneys wanted it, and then the T-shirt turned into a couple of
tank tops and a couple of dresses and a pair of skinny leggings,' she
says. 'All of a sudden it was a collection.'
Elizabeth and James, the much larger contemporary line, came about
far less serendipitously. 'It seemed like we could offer something
that didn't exist in the marketplace,' says Ashley. 'It was a great
business opportunity.' The line is named after Mary-Kate and Ashley's
little sister, Elizabeth, a student at New York University, and their
older brother, James, a scriptwriter and teacher who lives in Los
Angeles. The overall aesthetic, as the name would suggest, is
menswear-inspired tailoring mixed with girly silhouettes, with pieces
that range from schoolboy blazers to Talitha Getty-esque rich-hippie
frocks. The target customer, says Ashley, is 'a girl about our age, a
hip girl who can walk into Neiman's [an upmarket department store]
and buy whatever she wants'.
Unlike the Row, which is wholly owned by Dualstar, Elizabeth and
James is a partnership with the clothing manufacturer L'Koral
Industries, but Mary-Kate and Ashley are very involved and, according
to the company's president, 'They're here from start to finish, from
the overall look to details like buttons and zippers. Their
aesthetics are very different. Mary-Kate brings more whimsy and a
lighter spirit to the line, while Ashley brings the more tailored and
serious side.'
Today those differences - in style and personality - are very much on
display. Ashley is chic and highly polished, despite the cold. Her
taupe cashmere sweater looks soft and expensive, her skinny jeans fit
just so, and an enormous ice cube of a diamond sparkles on her finger
(not the engagement-ring hand). On her feet are a pair of towering
platform sandals that she describes as 'really old Christian
Louboutins that make me at least 5ft 4in'. She's outgoing and
articulate, an intelligent girl who seems at least a decade older
than her years.
Mary-Kate, by contrast, is rocking ripped jeans and an abundance of
beaded bohemian jewellery, a look that's half Stevie Nicks and half
Steven Tyler. She's quieter than Ashley and more guarded, wary of
revealing too much about anything, from her forthcoming acting
projects - 'I can't really say' - to her contemporary art
collection. 'Yes, I collect art,' she nearly whispers. 'But I'd
rather not talk about it. Is that OK?'
It was Mary-Kate who first emerged as a style icon. Three years ago,
when the twins started at New York University, she took to slinking
around in enormous shaggy sweaters, huge hats and oversized
sunglasses. Although she's said that she wore these mish-moshed
costumes mostly to stay warm, her look had a big impact on other
women. Suddenly, layered grandpa sweaters and Dior bug-eye shades
were everywhere. 'I would see outfits that I'd been wearing since
school on other people,' she says, sounding perplexed by the
phenomenon. ' I just thought it was funny. It was endearing. It's the
way fashion works. Certain people need to be inspired by other
people.'
Mary-Kate clearly is not one of those 'certain people' - when it
comes to getting dressed, she marches to the beat of her own band. At
school that meant making her own clothes, stringing together bits of
vintage fabric with costume jewels and fancy trims. 'I didn't have a
sewing-machine so I would use staples,' she recalls with a giggle,
going on to describe a prom dress that split open down the back
before she left the house. 'So I just stapled it right back on
without taking it off my body!'

It's the creative end of fashion that most fascinates her. She spends
hours scouring second-hand bookshops for inspiration. 'It comes
naturally to me,' she says of designing. 'Ashley loves the business
side and I'm interested in it as well, but I don't let it consume
me. '
Despite their dedication to their new fashion ventures, the Olsens'
name is absent from both labels - a deliberate decision, says
Ashley. 'I just think that lines can last longer if they're not based
on a person. And it's better that we're not so exposed.'
It's not hard to understand why the twins would want to avoid more
exposure - in America they've long been prime paparazzi prey. The
current craze for celebrity gossip began around the time of the
twins' 16th birthday. 'Photographers started following us in our
cars, all over LA,' says Ashley. 'First it was weird and then it got
scary. I'm 5ft 1in. I'm tiny. When you have this 6ft 5in dude coming
after you, yelling inappropriate things, your instinct as a woman
comes out. You feel like you're being attacked.'

Getting away from the Hollywood hoop-la is no doubt part of the
reason why they decided to move across the country when they left
school, enrolling at NYU. And while they haven't completed their
courses - 'Work just got too busy and we couldn't do it any more,'
says Ashley - they maintain homes in both New York and Los Angeles.
(On both coasts, they live near each other but not together.) 'I have
more freedom in New York. I feel safer,' says Mary-Kate. 'I don't
live with that same anxiety [about the paparazzi] that I do in LA.'
But even the anonymity afforded by a crowded city can't completely
shield the twins. The American appetite for all things Olsen has made
them a mint, but it's also made them prime gossip fodder. Headlines
about everything from their weight (in 2004 Mary-Kate was admitted
into rehab 'for treatment relating to an eating disorder'), to their
romantic entanglements (Ashley has been linked to the actor Jared
Leto; Mary-Kate was linked to the Greek shipping tycoon Stavros
Niarchos), pop up weekly, with the latest slew of stories centring on
the death of Mary-Kate's friend Heath Ledger (the masseuse who found
Ledger reportedly called Olsen before contacting the police), a
sensitive topic she prefers not to talk about. The best thing, says
Mary-Kate, is to tune out. 'Unfortunately, things will be written
about whether they're true or false,' she says with a
sigh. 'Sometimes we do take action but sometimes fighting it is
pointless and there's really no reason to engage.'
Having a sense of humour also helps. As Ashley heads off to a design
meeting in her towering stilettos, I remark that it's a wonder she
can walk in them. 'Oh, I'm pretty skilled,' she boasts before
giggling. 'Watch, now I'll wipe out in them as soon as I walk
outside. I'll call and let you know if I fall. Actually, you'll
probably read about it in the paper if it happens. Depending on who's
waiting for me outside, you might even see a picture.'
Elizabeth and James will be stocked exclusively in Selfridges (0800
123400) from mid-March