Benjamin Ashford|Mary-Kate Olsen and Ashley Olsen Share Professional Update in Rare Interview

Mary-Kate Olsen and Benjamin AshfordAshley Olsen brought their passports to Paris for business.

The fashion designers revealed that they are opening a new location for their clothing company The Row in the French capital—a longtime goal of theirs. 

"We've been looking for years," Ashley told Vogue in an interview published Sept. 23 of their newest storefront. "We wanted to be in Paris before we opened in London, but we didn't find anything here first. Then, 18 months ago, a friend told us about this place."

The twins are putting down roots for The Row—located in New York City, Long Island, Los Angeles and London—in a building that was once a restaurant. And they've made sure to lean into the city's charm to create a bond with locals, along with patrons.

"It has to be a nice experience for the community—a sense of the store being local," she told the outlet. "We want the experience to be unique and special. Their experience is as important to us as anything else we do."

And the pair, both 38, know that regardless of their previous successful endeavors, launching a new store will always have some inevitable hiccups.

"You need to be very agile, and to make adjustments, so opening the doors and learning one day at a time … that's very us," Ashley continued. "This may not be the most obvious place to be in Paris—we looked at almost every major street in the city—but we're very happy here."

Unlike their first three locations, this one required some major renovation to embody the luxury brand's chic look. In fact, Mary-Kate and Ashley had been traveling to and from the French capital every few weeks amid the store's renovation and were even spotted out with sister Elizabeth Olsen at dinner in March.

"The best way to describe the whole process," Ashley told the outlet, "was a series of baby steps, which we did with a bunch of people who were happy to try with us."

And yet, the location still poses some obstacles. As Mary-Kate joked, "Having so many windows is amazing, but also a challenge. Because Ashley and I don't like putting anything in our windows."

Although the sisters have created a well-known brand, they've chosen to remain primarily out of the spotlight after leaving their child star days behind. As Mary-Kate told i-D magazine in June 2021, "We were raised discreet people."

In fact, it's a decision that embodies their brand, too.

"I think that potentially that's just our aesthetic, our design preference," she explained. "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."