How the Olsen twins conquered the world of luxury fashion
The ballyhoo over Pharrell’s debut menswear collection for Louis Vuitton shimmied on apace this week – the industry is agog at his $1 million golden monogrammed handbag and marketing campaign starring Rihanna’s naked baby bump. All of which rather drowned out whispers surrounding the future of the definitive quiet luxury* brand The Row, whose owners Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen are reportedly – and discretely – seeking new investment.
So what? The Row is an enigma. Its bona fide cult status is derived from a playbook that defies 21st-century fashion convention. How did a brand that eschews celebrity marketing end up arguably the most serious and influential new luxury brand on the planet?
Twinset and girls. Born in 1986, the Olsen twins shared the starring role of Michelle Tanner in popular US sitcom Full House from the tender age of nine months. American tweens flocked to snap up Mary-Kate and Ashley dolls, homewares, fragrance and other goodies from Walmarts across the States and by 2007 Forbes had ranked them the eleventh richest women in entertainment, worth $100 million.
Row-ing up. The sisters ditched acting in 2004 and upped sticks to Manhattan. In 2006, an ultimately aborted project to design a tee for The One Campaign ended up as a $195 “perfect T-shirt” which was the inception of The Row. Echoing Donna Karan’s 1985 “Seven Easy Pieces” principle, The Row’s first collection featured just seven items, including a pair of stretch leather leggings, now available (size Large only) on Net-a-Porter for £1,172. This summer’s It shoe is by The Row: a pair of Fisherman sandals will set you back £920 at Matches.
It’s what Shiv Roy wears in Succession. Not obviously trendy, but gorgeous up close and wincingly expensive. The twins cite Yohji Yamamoto, Karl Lagerfeld, Dries Van Noten and “old Coco Chanel” as influences. Named in homage to the seat of luxe men’s tailoring, Savile Row, Mary-Kate calls the company “a non-branded brand”. The twins don’t like the red carpet and do precious little marketing. In The Row’s three shops worldwide (the Los Angeles one has a swimming pool in it), clothes are merchandised among Picasso ceramics and Pierre Jeanneret furniture. It’s classically wearable, intelligently cut and scrupulously well made, with no logos, no bling and hardly any colour. You can shop 136 different black pieces on therow.com, but just 15 red and one purple. Connoisseurs will enjoy the irony-free separate colour filters for “brown”, “beige” and “tan”.
Sustainability and human rights are all the rage at the Global Fashion Summit in Copenhagen this week, but the Olsens were legit early adopters – way back in 2004 they insisted on full maternity rights for Bangladeshi seamstresses working on their Walmart line. The Row is handmade in Europe, by fairly paid, skilled craftspeople.
There have been a few frayed seams. In 2017, the twins settled a class action lawsuit brought by former interns who had worked for free at The Row. President David Schulte left the business in 2020 after New York department store Barney’s closed down owing the company $3.7 million. The Row had been its top luxury brand, outselling even Prada. Industry bible Women’s Wear Daily reported in 2020 that the label had been approved for a $2.3 million government “Paycheck Protection” loan and was making substantial staff cuts.
The investment is most likely earmarked for expansion into Asia where The Row has yet to build a major presence – but it’s the timing that’s interesting. The Row aesthetic owes a lot to Phoebe Philo, who produced a decade-long run of blockbuster collections at Céline until 2017. The Row has filled a Philo-shaped void in the market, but the designer’s debut eponymous collection, in which LVMH owns a minority stake, drops – finally – this September.
*The clothes are still cool but the phrase “quiet luxury” is so over. British Vogue only proclaimed it “the one trend to pay attention to this year” last March but, along with its less flattering sibling, “stealth wealth”, the term itself is now considered rather vulgar. You have been warned.
