Mary-Kate Olsen says she and her twin Ashley were ‘raised to be discreet people’ in rare interview

• Mary-Kate Olsen said she and her twin, Ashley, were raised to be "discreet people."
• The sisters say that being private is also their "aesthetic" with their fashion brand, The Row.
• The former child stars appeared on the popular '80s sitcom "Full House" but quit acting in 2012.
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Mary-Kate Olsen acknowledged in a rare interview that she and her twin sister, Ashley, are "discreet people," despite becoming TV stars when they were both only a few months old.

The former "Full House" child stars opened up about their design label The Row (which they started as New York University students in 2006), style, and work ethic while speaking with i-D magazine's Osman Ahmed for an oral history of the fashion brand published on Monday, which also included interviews with The Row's famous fans, like actors Jonah Hill and Zoë Kravitz and model Gigi Hadid.

"We were raised to be discreet people," Mary-Kate said.

"I think that potentially that's just our aesthetic, our design preference," Ashley added, commenting on how their discretion extends to design choices for The Row. "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," she continued. "It doesn't always start from that simplistic place."

Mary-Kate and Ashley, who started acting on "Full House" when they were only nine months and retired from the entertainment industry in 2012, told Ahmed that they "didn't necessarily even want to let people" know that they were the creative minds behind The Row when they started the label in 2006.

"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?" Ashley said about their early years leading the brand, which turns 15 in 2021.

"We had just moved to New York. We were 18 years old and I think what we did know was that we wanted to take that time to take a break from what we were previously doing and to explore things that interested us, and explore what life has to offer," she continued.

Mary-Kate and Ashley have previously said they prefer keeping a low-profile because 'we've been there, we've done that'

Their "discreet" upbringing, as Mary-Kate described it, is reflected in more than just their design choices.

Mary-Kate and Ashley don't have any kind of public social media themselves, though The Row does have an official brand account on Instagram. Their last major interview, before their chat with Ahmed, was with British Vogue in April 2019.

Even in the 2019 interview, both sisters stressed that it was important for them to remain private and keep a low profile, especially given their childhood in the spotlight.

"We've been there, we've done that, we started out that way," Mary-Kate told British Vogue. "But this is the way we chose to move forward in our lives: to not be in the spotlight, to really have something that speaks for itself."

Their decision to stay away from the spotlight also factors into why "Full House" fans didn't get to see the Olsen twins reprise their role as Michelle, the youngest Tanner daughter, in a reboot of the popular '80s sitcom, titled "Fuller House." The reboot aired on Netflix for five seasons from 2016 to 2020.

According to executive producer Bob Boyett, Mary-Kate and Ashley didn't make an appearance in "Fuller House" because of their busy schedule running The Row. Boyett also said that Ashley told him that she no longer feels comfortable being in front of the camera.