Beige Ambition

Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen grew up to make New York’s most desirable clothes. But can even perfection survive the pandemic?

- Matthew Schneier

WHEN IS A sweater more than a sweater? When is a sweater even a sweater? The difference between a pullover and a few skeins of yarn isn’t much more than two needles and a dry-cleaning tag but for that cymbal crash of desire. The Row makes sweaters, thousand-dollar sweaters, that grip the mallet. ¶ There’s something about The Row. It beggars explanation. It has long since transcended its beginnings as a celebrity-fashion-label lark founded by the entrepreneurial fraternal-twin former child stars MaryKate and Ashley Olsen. Now 34, they were, 20 years ago, the most hyperbranded tweens on the planet. Then they gave up acting to dress the women they hoped to grow up to become. The Row is fashion for those for whom money is no object but who don’t need to look obviously rich, not in the way a Versace blouse looks rich—which is to say, aggressively, literally. It purses its lips at logos and that’s-from-last-season trend obsolescence. Nor does The Row flaunt sex or youth or the body. It speaks in the hushed tones of perfect propriety, of connoisseurship. It is crafted just so, cut just so. It is not original and doesn’t pretend to originality. It is chic in the excellent, unfaultably appropriate way that reminds you that true chic may be the apotheosis of boring.