Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen are ‘discreet’ for a reason

By Lisa Respers France, CNN

We don’t know much about Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen for a reason.

In a rare interview with i-D, Mary-Kate Olsen says she and her twin are “discreet people — that’s how we were raised.”

That’s a bit of an understatement.

The former child stars of “Full House,” who went on to build a media empire when they were tweens, are now 30 something fashion moguls and considered practically hermits when it comes to the celebrity world.

They almost never grant interviews, aren’t on social media, and agreed to talk to i-D in honor of the 15th anniversary of their fashion line, The Row.

If the twins had their way, people wouldn’t even know it was theirs.

“We didn’t want to be in front of it, we didn’t necessarily even want to let people know it was us,” Ashley Olsen said. “It was really about the product, to the point where we were like: Who could we get to front this so that we don’t have to?”

The publication refers to the pair as “detail-obsessive designers for whom enormous emphasis is measured in the merest millimetres.”

Mary-Kate Olsen said, “I think we’re very much perfectionists and hard workers and we’ve always been hard workers.”

“So, I am happy that people look at it as a perfect product, or products that feel complete, or whole. I think the reason that we do fashion is to constantly try to fix our imperfections, and you always have next season to do that,” she said. “It’s also our job to find every imperfection in there to make sure that we’re constantly pushing ourselves and training our eyes and making sure everyone is served. Just evolving and learning.”

The complete interview appears in i-D’s The New Worldwi-De Issue, no. 363, Summer 2021 issue.