It’s felt like Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen have been in the business for a long time. In fact, however, they left Hollywood behind nearly 15 years ago now. Despite this, and in spite of their particularly private personal lives, the sisters have managed to stay in the spotlight. And it’s all thanks to their business savvy.
Their high-end clothing line The Row has been buzzy since the line launched in 2006. The story goes that Ashley didn’t like the fit of most t-shirts, and wanted to build one that was “the perfect fit” with “perfect fabric,” per WWD. The brand launched a 7-piece collection and has grown exponentially, adding menswear and children’s clothing and reportedly hitting the $100 million in sales mark in 2021.
If you were to ask The Row’s Production Manager Joe Karban it’s because the former actresses really have a keen sense when it comes to fashion and the team they’ve hired to make the clothes that are flying off of shelves. Joe told the New York Times what they do “turns to gold.”
Everything Mary-Kate and Ashley do turns to gold. 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.
The careful attention to detail has been a prominent signature of their entire careers, as the two women took charge early on. They created their own company Dualstar at a young age to produce their own ’90s movies. In the early 2000s they took their movie and TV fame to another level by creating their own clothing line at Walmart. As adults, they’ve parlayed this fame into high-end fashion, and it’s paid off.
Among the most impressive stats? Nearly 20 years in, The Row is exploding even more in popularity. Gwyneth Paltrow famously wore the brand to enhance her “courtcore” looks when she went on the stand in her viral ski crash trial last year. The fashion line’s popular Margaux tote blew up earlier in 2024, becoming the most popular product in Q1, with reports mentioning the hand bag growing in search volume by 198%. The cheapest versions of the bag retail for over $5,000 dollars.
Not that the twins even want the spotlight. Ashley Olsen admitted that running a brand comes with some of the same cons that acting does, in terms of there just needing to be “face time” in order to continue. She revealed that’s really not the vibe she and her sister want.
There is a certain amount of face time that you need when you have a brand. We just wanted to function more behind the scenes.
But people are still very interested in what the actresses do. Any mention of the girls by John Stamos about their time on Full House is big news. Any feature in the media about what’s going on in Ashley or Mary-Kate’s personal lives makes the front page of the Internet. Their fame and the focus on their fame very nearly convinced their sister Elizabeth Olsen to change her name.
It makes sense. Many millennials in particular have followed their fashion and trajectories since they were young stars on Full House and traveled the world with them in their teens through movies like Passport to Paris and When in Rome. Now those kids have money to burn of their own, and they’re burning it on fashion from The Row. $100 million per year’s worth. While it may come with cons, it’s not a bad way to stay relevant.