Cate Blanchett appears wearing The Row, the brand owned by Mary-Kate & Ashley Olsen, in a new photoshoot for Vogue Magazine. See the article and the photo by Annie Leibovitz below.

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One feels luxuriously dressed in a calm, pure, and minimal way,” says Cate Blanchett, serene and soigné in a cashmere blanket coat from the label she’s lauding: The Row. Like Blanchett herself, The Row is synonymous with quality and a kind of independent synergy. Of course, she’s hardly the only fan: Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen’s customers are helping the eleven-year-old label claim the mantle of the wardrobe of our time in the same way that Donna Karan defined New York women’s essentials in the nineties.
Behind their international success, Mary-Kate and Ashley have always worked privately and mindfully, showing beautiful clothes their way, sans spectacle. In fact, they loathe fuss. But how did two former child stars—who just turned 30 this past June—become such connoisseurs of so many different women’s wardrobes? The twins are as succinct in their response as they are in their designs: “Continuity,” says Mary-Kate. “We are a trustworthy brand that really sells exactly what we say we’re selling.” Adds Ashley: “The only people we feel we need to answer to are our clients.”
They attribute their perfectionist resolve to having been given a voice at a very young age and having sat in many meetings with heads of the entertainment and finance industries, allowing both of them to hone their ability to decipher “the good influences versus the bad influences,” as Ashley puts it, while staying focused. “We own our brand. We don’t get pushed in any direction.”
With the exception of a few Italian knits, they manufacture all of their ready-to-wear in the United States. “That means a lot,” Mary-Kate says. “We’ve created at least 80 jobs.” Their elegant designs, by their very nature, challenge fast fashion.
As it turns out, the Olsens were ahead of their time in more than just style. In their April 2001 issue of Mary-Kate and Ashley magazine, they predicted Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign as part of a feature devoted to the question “When will we get our first female president, and who might it be?” Sixteen years later, their designs defy age and—even though they have just launched menswear—gender. “It’s more about respecting one another, whether you’re a female or a male or whatever,” says Mary-Kate. With the Women’s March on Washington then around the corner, she adds, “Women are not the only ones that feel this way—a lot of people feel it. The atmosphere around the entire globe is very interesting right now.”
“What’s going to happen tomorrow? Collectively, I feel everyone is asking that,” says Ashley, who’s made a positive attitude her goal of the year. “What we’ve built so far is pretty incredible. I would like to push that further—but also to be a little lighter on ourselves.”—Emma Elwick-Bates

via Vogue Magazine

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