Most photos of Ashley Olsen from the last decade features the co-founder of The Row artfully draped in a stealth wealth shade of grey, black and navy. Likely, she’s wearing oversized tailoring (baggy, mannish trousers or an XL shirt, perhaps) with unapologetically unsexy footwear (say, flip-flops or Birkenstocks). So you can imagine the shock of seeing this famous twin pictured strolling through Los Angeles wearing a plaid shirt, Yeezys and track pants.
My first thought was: are we witnessing an Attack of the Bodysnatchers situ?
Then I thought, she was thrown into fame at a tender age. She’s gone from actress to bonafide arbiter of fashion. We watched her transform from grungy to glamorous and then settle as a comfortably chic aesthete, but maybe beneath the layers of luxury and £4000 cashmere, perhaps this is her denouement taste. Is this, in fact, Ashley Olsen’s real personal style?
I call it lazy layers. The look is part Justin Bieber on a date with Hailey Baldwin and part Kurt Cobain with a dash of Kanye West.
Let’s start with the sunglasses, they are the opposite of what’s supposedly ‘in fashion’. All those ridiculously tiny micro shades that the Hadid’s swear by seemingly don’t cut if for Ashely. These are pure paparazzi-blockers straight from J Lo’s mid-2000s playbook.
Moving on, let’s talk about that top. Plaid is one of the key runway trends for winter - it was seen on the catwalks of Versace and Gucci - yet I don’t think that crossed this Olsen’s mind when she slipped over her undershirt. In my humble opinion, I’d say she was curating a Slackers statement that neatly ties into her t-shirt, which features the slogan ‘High Wasted’ and ‘this is a magazine for stoner girls’ with a blown-up picture of girl (rumoured to be Brooke Shields, albeit strongly denied by) smoking pot with Human Rights, the singer of punk band Bad Brains. God knows how long Ashley has been sitting on this sartorial statement because it turns out the designer, Phil Chang, made a small run of these tees in late 2017 and had no idea the Olsen even knew about them.
Below the waist (or should that be wasted?) Ashley’s wearing sweatpants and Yeezys. Low key but very SoCal. The internet tells me Ashley has been a fan of Kanye’s sneakers since at least 2016. Same, Ashley, same.
It’s interesting that Ashley exists for so many in this untouchable realm of Met Galas and fashion week and yet here she is having a jogging bottoms day. So often we see her swathed in impeccable black layers (without a lint roller in sight) so it’s refreshing to see that even an Olsen needs a day off from high fashion’s impossible perfectionism.