Behind the Row: Meet MK & Ashley Olsen

A Vogue Production



"Ashley is often considered the financial brain, Mary-Kate the creative—though it’s more complex than that. Sometimes—you see it in photographs, where they stand, shoulders touching, half-turning inward to each other—they almost seem like a single, self-protecting organism. “Some of our memories are shared,” Mary-Kate says at one point. “We don’t know what actually happened to whom. One of us was stung by a bee, but we can’t remember who, because we both felt it.”

"Ten years hence, it would not be surprising if the tiny Ashley and Mary-Kate Olsen turned out to be two of the largest players in mid-twenty-first-century American fashion. “The thing about us,” Mary-Kate says, “is we think big. Huge.” After all, in 2021, they’ll still be only 34."

Article by Sarah Mower

Photographs by Bruce Weber