Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen Just Made Quiet Luxury Even Quieter

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This morning, The Row published images of its Resort 2025 collection, which they showed last week in Paris. If, perhaps, you don’t know why that’s a big deal, allow me. The Olsen twins’ luxury design house The Row had a no phones, no social media policy for the guests of their show, gifting them Japanese stationary and a pen with which they could take handwritten notes of the show if they wanted to, a move Prada had done banning cameras at a show in 1993.

In the years since the words quiet luxury took over algorithms and search engines, The Row’s name has been plastered all over that conversation, which I can imagine, they must’ve hated. Quiet luxury is tricky because ultimately, it deals in clout, which, once found out, is neither quiet nor luxurious. Nobody knows this better than the child stars-turned-fashion designers who existed as a commoditized unit of two since they were infants. Mary-Kate Olsen and Ashley Olsen have worked hard to redirect the flashing cameras and the headlines obsessed with using their names for cheap thrills. In establishing a new etiquette for guests at their show, they did it again.

Instagram fashion blog, @stylenotcom, who attended the show, shared written descriptions of the show on their page. “COATS FULLY WRAPPED, BUT STILL REVEALING HIDDEN SECRETS. A BIT MORE LADY LIKE THAN USUAL, BUT WE LIKE IT AS USUAL,” said one slide. “MOM’S HEELS, BOYFRIEND’S SNEAKERS, GRANDMA’S TURBANS,” said the next. “ALWAYS TOP, BUT NEVER OVER THE TOP,” said the following. “AFTER THE SHOW THEY GAVE US A COFFEE, MADELEINE, BREAD AND BUTTER.”

I found these descriptions alone to be so provocative (that’s @stylenotcom’s gift, to be honest), but amidst all the noise about whether or not a camera-free runway is a good thing or a bad thing, or what it means for the state of in-groups and out-groups and whether or not this is “gatekeeping,” all I could think about when I imagined the collection over the weekend were the words, “more lady-like than usual, but we like it as usual.” That’s the point and the essence, I think, of The Row and what they try to do with their clothes. Personally I don’t think every runway show will be camera-free from here on out. Rather I see it as a chess move The Row made to reestablish who they are.

Now onto the clothes, as the Olsens intended. The anticipation was worth the wait, and thank god because part of me wondered if any collection of elevated basics could stand up to the scratching paws of curiosity from the online fashion community. But indeed, the collection is truly beautiful. The opening khaki trench is as much of a gown as it is outerwear. The fur coat and rope-fringed scarf worn as a belt in Look 9 look as vintage as it does modern. The soft fringes on the sleeves and hem of the long white gown in Look 12 feel as subversive and edgy as they do delicate and classic. We don’t still need to be talking about how they master draping and tailoring, do we?