Nearly twenty years after Mary-Kate Olsen and Ashely Olsen‘s last foray into film, the 36-year-old fashion designers enjoyed a New York Minute of their own on Tuesday (Oct. 18). The fashionistas made their way out of the Manhattan offices of their fashion label, The Row, after a long day of work. Both Olsens bundled up with the fall temperatures dipping down in the brisk 50s. Ashley and Mary-Kate dressed in full-length black coats. Mary-Kate opted for a black knit beanie, a multi-colored scarf, and a pair of New Balance shoes. On the other hand, Ashley opted for a mustard-colored beanie and black shoes.
Prior to this sighting, Mary-Kate and Ashley appeared during Paris Fashion Week following The Row’s show on Sept. 28. It was a brief appearance, with the designer twins making their way down a staircase to applaud the collection and the bevy of models who walked down the runway. The blink-and-you-miss-it appearance was captured online. The twins also posed alongside J.D. Moran for a photo that was reshared among many Olsen sisters’ fan accounts.
Though the Olsen twins have established themselves as fashion heavyweights, there was once a time when they were tiny entertainment titans, overseeing a multi-media empire thanks to a career started on the 80s sitcom Full House. However, 2004 marked a shift in the Olsens’ career with the subsequent box-office stalling of New York Minute. While Entertainment Weekly reported that their family company, Dualstar Entertainment, posted in 2003 sales of $1 billion in nine countries (from Mary-Kate and Ashley clothing to cosmetics to DVDs and CDs), New York Minute failed to recoup its $30 million budget.
The film racked up only $21.289 million at the box office, per Box Office Mojo. EW noted that the film arrived at the time when audiences were flooded with teen-related films – 13 Going on 30, The Prince & Me, Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen, and Mean Girls were named in the EW piece – and New York Minute arrived three years after the spoof Not Another Teen Movie.
Plus, New York Minute featured Mary-Kate and Ashley right before they turned 18. At the time of the movie’s theatrical release (the second Olsen twins feature to get such a treatment, behind 1995’s It Takes Two), Mary-Kate and Ashley had plans to attend New York University. From there, a fashion career would blossom and they’d leave films, for the most part, behind.