Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen are as well known for their childhood acting careers and high-end fashion brand, The Row, as they are for how rarely they speak to the press and how secretive they are about their personal lives. While that predilection for privacy is likely a response to a life spent in the public eye, Mary Kate insists it’s also just how they grew up.

To celebrate the 15th anniversary of launching their fashion line, the sisters participated in an oral history of their brand for i-D magazine. When discussing The Row’s covered-up, modest aesthetic, Mary Kate explained that their particular taste is due to the fact that, “We were raised to be discreet people,” she said. Ashley added, “I think that potentially that’s just our aesthetic, our design preference. But that doesn’t mean that we don’t also appreciate something truly ornate or maximal. Sometimes a collection even starts quite like that, and then gets pared down. It doesn’t always start from that simplistic place.”

Later on in the interview, Ashley also revealed that, initially, she and Mary-Kate were against having their name associated with the fashion brand at all, as they feared it would change people’s perception of the work they were creating. “We didn’t want to be in front of it, we didn’t necessarily even want to let people know it was us,” she 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?” They also confessed that when it comes to everything they do, they’re “very much perfectionists.” Mary Kate explained, “We’re hard workers and we’ve always been hard workers,” adding that it makes her “happy” that people see the things they make “as a perfect product or products that feel complete, or whole.”

She continued, “I think the reason we do fashion is to constantly try to fix our imperfections. And you have next season to do that. But 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.” Ashley seconded that perspective, adding, “I think it’s been really important for us to stay in control and to do things at a time that feels right. That has been the driving force of the brand and there are certain things probably that are accelerated, but there are other things that have slowed down. So, I think it’s about always finding that balance of making sure you’re obviously not behind or slow, but that you’re keeping up with the pace of the business in the right way. Not getting ahead of yourself, but not staying too far behind. And I think that’s an interesting balance.”

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