Inside the lives of Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen, from child stars to founders of a fashion brand selling $13,000 coats
- Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen rose to fame as Michelle Tanner, a role they shared on "Full House."
- The Olsen twins no longer act, and they are now successful fashion designers.
Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen got their starts as child actors on "Full House" in 1987, when they were under a year old.
Born on June 13, 1986, in Sherman Oaks, California, fraternal twins Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen quickly became stars.
In 1987, when they were infants, the Olsens began sharing the role of Michelle Tanner on "Full House."
The show ran until 1995, ending when the twins were 8 years old.
John Stamos, one of their costars on the sitcom, recently admitted that he briefly had the Olsens fired from the show when they were babies.
"They were 11 months old, and god bless them. [The producers] kept switching: 'This one's not gonna cry.' I couldn't deal with it. And I said, 'This is not gonna work.' And so they got rid of them," Stamos told hosts Josh Peck and Ben Soffer on the podcast "Good Guys" in April.
"It was only a few days, and I said, 'Bring the Olsens back! These kids are terrible.'"
Their acting careers took off, and the twins costarred in popular movies geared towards children.
Their work following "Full House" includes "Two of a Kind," "So Little Time," "Holiday in the Sun," and "New York Minute."
"It Takes Two," released the same year that "Full House" wrapped up, is the twins' top-rated movie, according to audience scores on Rotten Tomatoes.
But the Olsen twins haven't acted since the early 2010s. "We've been there, we've done that," Mary-Kate Olsen said in 2019.
They even declined to appear in "Fuller House" — the spinoff series of the sitcom that propelled them into the limelight — when it ran between 2016 and 2020.
Jodie Sweetin, who played Stephanie Tanner on "Full House," discussed the Olsen twins' decision to leave acting behind in a 2022 appearance on the podcast "Off the Vine."
"It wasn't like anything bad ever happened," Sweetin said. "It was just, they were 8 years old when the show stopped, so, you know, their whole life existed after."
"For me, I was 5 to 13, that was like my formative years, my middle school, my elementary school. Like that was it, that was my growing up. For them, they barely were in, like, first grade and they were, like, done," she continued.
The twins addressed their decision to leave acting in favor of fashion in a 2019 interview with Vogue.
"We've been there, we've done that, we started out that way," Mary-Kate Olsen said. "But this is the way we chose to move forward in our lives: to not be in the spotlight, to really have something that speaks for itself."
They began their transition into the fashion industry in 2004, when they were still teenagers.
The Olsen twins launched a clothing line for girls ages 4 to 14 in collaboration with Walmart in 2004. They launched the line under their joint-owned fashion-and-entertainment company, Dualstar, which they founded in 1993.
As a 2017 report by Harper's Bazaar shows, the Mary-Kate and Ashley collection featured a variety of styles that were emblematic of iconic trends from the 2000s, such as Capri and cargo pants.
They moved to New York City and both enrolled in New York University in 2004, although they later dropped out.
In 2004, the LA Times reported that the Olsens had enrolled in New York University's Gallatin School of Individualized Study.
"Mary-Kate and Ashley just want to have as normal a college experience as possible," Michael Pagnotta, the twins' then-spokesperson, said at the time.
"Their reasons for going to college are not vocational. They know a lot about lots of things from working in the real world since they were toddlers. This is their chance to explore," Pagnotta said.
According to the LA Times, they purchased a $7.3 million, 5,725-square-foot condo in the West Village when they moved to New York.
In 2006, the Olsens founded The Row, which The Business of Fashion called "one of New York's most high-profile young brands."
Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen launched The Row in 2006 soon after dropping out of NYU. The brand, which has an "anti-trendiness" philosophy, focuses on simplicity, quality, and comfort, The Cut reported in 2021. As well as clothing, the brand has designed eyewear, purses, and footwear.
The Business of Fashion described The Row as "one of New York's most high-profile young brands," highlighting its "relaxed, effortless aesthetic."
In 2021, Mary-Kate Olsen told i-D about the twins' intentions behind the brand, saying, "It had to be easy. It had to be comfortable on all bodies. It really had to have all the elements that we continue to put into our projects and design. The fabrics had to be luxurious and perfect and, hopefully, have longevity."
"The items were really about perfecting and simplifying the details," she added.
In 2019, the Business of Fashion reported that The Row was bringing in $100 and $200 million annually.
Despite their early introduction to the limelight, they were reluctant to become the faces of their brand.
In a profile on the twins, Olivia Singer of British Vogue discussed the clothing line's uniquely discreet branding.
"It determinedly shies away from the press: it never advertises (the Olsens themselves rarely grant interviews) and this season it didn't even hold a fashion show (instead, a dozen rails of particularly lovely garments were quietly presented in its New York studio)," Singer wrote in 2019.
The Olsens have also spoken out about their reluctance to be the faces of the brand.
"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 told i-D in 2021. "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?"
In the same interview, Mary-Kate Olsen called herself and her sister "discreet people."
In 2007, the Olsen twins founded a second line, Elizabeth & James, named after two of their siblings.
Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen honored their family by launching a brand titled Elizabeth & James, the names of their sister and brother.
Their sister, Elizabeth Olsen, has her own successful acting career, and is perhaps best known for her role as Wanda Maximoff/Scarlet Witch in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. James, who goes by his middle name Trent, is a comic-book writer and works in movie production, according to Cosmopolitan. They also have two half-siblings, Courtney Taylor and Jake.
Founded in 2007, the company sold sunglasses, jewelry, and bags. Starting in 2019, Elizabeth & James began being sold exclusively at Kohl's.
They launched another brand in 2009, which they also named to honor their family. Olsenboye, a clothing line for teens and tweens which was sold exclusively at JCPenney, was named using the Norwegian version of their last name.
That year, at the age of 20, they were ranked the 11th richest women in entertainment by Forbes.
In 2007, Forbes ranked the twins as the 11th richest women in entertainment, reporting that their company, Dualstar Entertainment Group, had been selling $1 billion worth of merchandise annually. Forbes also noted that the twins were featured in advertisements for the upscale fashion brand Badgley Mischka.
While their more recent net worth is not known, in 2017, the Olsens were on the Forbes 30 Under 30 All-Star Alumni list, in which the magazine chose individuals who it believes are "leading the millennial revolution of game changers."
Elizabeth & James is their more affordable line, whereas one pair of jeans from The Row can set you back close to $800.
The Row carries a variety of styles of jeans, but a pair of their Egli Boyfriend Denim Jeans in particular cost $790 on Bergdorf Goodman's website in May 2023.
In March 2023, Kendall Jenner posed in a $720-pair of low-rise jeans from The Row (in the style Beso) in a shoot for FWRD.
But that's just the beginning — The Row sells coats that cost over $13,000.
A belted, quilted leather coat costs $13,500 on Net-a-Porter, as of May 2023.
Items on The Row's website range in price from a $450 scooped-neck jersey T-shirt to a $29,000 alligator-skin bag made in Italy.
The Row and the Olsens have received various prestigious awards.
In 2012 and 2015, the Council of Fashion Designers of America presented Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen with the womenswear designers of the year award.
They won CFDA's accessory designer of the year award in 2014, 2018, and 2019. They are pictured with the award in 2019.
Their private lives have also made headlines. Mary-Kate Olsen got divorced in 2020 after a five-year marriage, while Ashley Olsen got married in 2022.
Mary-Kate Olsen, then 29, married then-46-year-old French banker Olivier Sarkozy — the half-brother of former French President Nicolas Sarkozy — in 2015. In 2020, during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, Olsen filed for divorce. In 2022, their shared Manhattan townhouse sold for $10.5 million, according to the New York Post.
Ashley Olsen is currently married to artist Louis Eisner. According to Radar, they began dating in 2017. They tied the knot in 2022 and reside in New York City.
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