Olsen Twins Label a Surprise Fashion Hit

By Drew Nelles,  Newser Staff
Posted Aug 27, 2009 9:10 AM CDT
Olsen Twins Label a Surprise Fashion Hit
Mary-Kate, left, and Ashley Olsen pose prior to the presentation of the Spring-Summer 2007 ready to wear collection by British designer John Galliano for French fashion house Dior in Paris.    (AP Photo/Remy de la Mauviniere, File)

With no formal fashion training and a celebrity image that’s more cutesy than couture, Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen have transformed into unlikely fashion icons, the New York Times reports. Sales of their high-end label The Row are around $10 million—better than many established brands—and they’re expected to climb by 30%. “I don’t think anybody really cares that it’s Mary-Kate and Ashley’s collection,” a fashion director says. “They’re buying it because they like it.”

The Row has succeeded by breaking fashion rules and ignoring flash-in-the-pan trends in favor of the basics: “the perfect schoolboy blazer, the perfect leather leggings, the perfect peacoat,” another insider says. And for the hard-working twins, now 23, fashion offers a creative outlet they never had. “We never had the time to discover, ‘Oh, I love doing this,’” Ashley says. “So for us this experience in fashion has been amazing.”
(More Olsen twins stories.)

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