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The Row's Uncomplicated Luxury

Forget the style needs of PYT – pretty young things – because Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen have women to dress.

Their successful label, The Row, known by retailers and customers for their “perfect” everything – whether a supima cotton t-shirt, a tuxedo jacket with just the right proportions or second skin black lambskin leather leggings – added a few more uncomplicated wardrobe essentials for those with highly discriminating tastes, which they showed at their first runway show during New York Fashion Week on Tuesday, Feb. 16.

Since launching the label in 2007, the twin sisters have eschewed a major show – and its subsequent media spotlight – preferring to present the collection to a handful of editors and buyers. Their show on Tuesday was no less exclusive, held in a small gallery that held no more than 100 seats.

Not that this has hurt their business. Like Martin Margiela, the designer who famously refused to ever be photographed, the Olsens have cultivated the kind of mystery and exclusivity around The Row that fashion loves, and that it sees increasingly less of.

But reverse psychology publicity stunt this is not. They actually do succeed in making great looking clothes in the classic American sportswear tradition that puts a premium on luxury combined with comfort and simplicity.

Take, for example, the opening look of their fall 2010 collection, a belted black wrap coat that looked like the next best thing – and infinitely more stylish – to cocooning yourself in a cashmere blanket.

They followed with whispery camisoles layered under corsets or over high buttoned blouses, silky low-slung pajama pants, soft black jodphurs with leather trim, embossed python skirts with interesting asymmetrical hems and other skirts that grazed the ankles – long and loose is looking very easy for fall. Nearly everything came out in black, with a few notes of no less classic colors, navy and white.

Before the show, they revealed in WWD that the collection this season was inspired by the German born, New York and Virginia-based, artist Beatrix Ost, whose own personal style, at least the one that has been photographed, reads as elegant Upper West Side eccentric.

Though the collection spoke more of an older clientele that gravitates to their very expensive, polished clothes, Mary-Kate and Ashley’s own tastes, as evidenced by Ashley’s floor-grazing black skirt and oversized gray sweater and Mary-Kate’s chic black layers, seemed rather closely aligned. As they took their bows, beaming widely and genuinely, the sisters seemed ready - and well-equipped - to take on a new phase.

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