Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen traded last season’s feathers and sequins for crochet, fringe and beads, but the travel story lives in add-ons, not in the cut. The tailoring, the house’s firmest ground, pulled in two directions.
PARIS — Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen put The Row on the road for spring, sending out tank tops, strings of beads and flat sandals at a Sept. 30 show that marked the label’s loosest collection to date. The road never really touched it.
Mona Tougaard opened in black trousers cut wide enough to pool over black slides, a cotton tank, a layer of small colored beaded necklaces and a ribbon belt embroidered with flowers, a red leather clutch in hand. What followed leaned on handwork: crochet, lace-edged camisoles, tops with raised floral and cherub embroidery, fringed skirts and dresses, a lace shawl draped over a beige trench. It’s a sharp turn from last season’s feathers and sequins, and a bigger one from the stripped-down wardrobe the Olsens built the house on.
Travel Without the Dust
The reference was overland travel. The clothes didn’t carry it. The bohemian signal sat almost entirely in add-ons – beads, belts, flip-flops and slides – laid over pieces The Row has sold for years: tailored trousers, a waistcoated dark suit, a trench. The embroidered ribbon belt that cinched the opening trousers returned on that suit. Repeated that often, it reads as a styling trick rather than a design idea.
Tailoring in Two Minds
Proportion is the house’s most dependable argument, and here it ran both ways. The opening trousers were wide and pooled at the ankle. Later came a late-’90s suit with cigarette trousers and a long blazer closing on three buttons below the bust. Neither is a problem alone. Together, with no visible rule for when one applies, they left the tailoring – the part of The Row that rarely needs defending – without a position.
The Beadwork Goes Under Cover
The necklaces were the lineup’s most repeated accessory and, as often as not, they were buried: strung beneath sheer tops, half-visible under unbuttoned shirts. Half-covered beadwork is a hard way to make a case for craft, particularly in a collection that otherwise points to hand-embroidery and traditional weaving techniques as its selling points.
A Looser Look, the Same Price Tag
The Row still collected phones from editors and influencers at the door, but posted images about a day later, faster than its past habit of waiting several days. The Olsens are nominated for designer of the year at this year’s Fashion Awards.
The commercial case runs through the staples and the accessories: flat shoes, canvas totes, a tank top over trousers. A T-shirt from the label costs 1,500 euros, so the road-trip wardrobe arrives with its pricing intact.
The Olsens have always been stronger editors than inventors, and this collection tests that line. It offers fewer new garments than new arrangements of familiar ones.
See the complete collection below:
Images courtesy of The Row
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