Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen were seen on a rare outing together in New York City on Tuesday, weeks after their real relationship with their Full House co-stars was revealed. The 40-year-old twins, who went from child actresses to fashion moguls, opted for comfort as they ran errands in Manhattan ahead of New York Fashion Week.
Mary-Kate wore an all-black look, including a flowy top, relaxed-fit jeans and strappy leather sandals, while Ashley wore a white T-shirt with baggy black shorts. The famously private pair, who rarely give interviews, both shielded their faces behind dark sunglasses.
The Olsens' luxury fashion house The Row will not show a new collection at New York Fashion Week. Instead, the duo are scheduled to present their Spring/Summer 2027 range at Paris Fashion Week on September 30.
Full House co-star breaks silence on the twins
The outing came after the twins' relationship with their Full House co-stars was revealed in July by their onscreen sister Jodie Sweetin, speaking on the podcast Comics and Kicks.
"Everyone's on good terms with them, but they were eight years old when this show stopped," Sweetin said. "Then they did all those movies and all that stuff that I don't know that they loved doing all the time."
The Olsen twins were infants when they began jointly playing Michelle Tanner, one of the three children of Bob Saget's widower character Danny Tanner. Sweetin played middle daughter Stephanie from the ages of five to 13, while Candace Cameron played firstborn DJ. The sitcom, which also starred Lori Loughlin, John Stamos, Scott Weinger, Andrea Barber and Dave Coulier, ran for eight seasons from 1987 to 1995.
Why the twins skipped the Netflix reboot
Sweetin said the twins "walked away from all of us at eight years," while she herself was in the midst of her "formative years" on the show. But at that age, she said, "you don't remember all that much, so it was like, they have a different relationship to being on set all the time. They might not remember being two years old and having us all carrying them around and doing all this stuff, but I do."
Sweetin also addressed the twins' decision not to return for the Netflix reboot Fuller House, which ran five seasons from 2016 to 2020. "They don't want attention and I get it," she said. "They had so much and were so invaded and so for public consumption, I totally understand why they don't wanna do that."
From Dualstar to a billion-dollar fashion label
When Full House ended, the Olsen twins launched into a career of TV movies produced by their company Dualstar, which was run by their manager Robert Thorne until they turned 18 and became co-presidents themselves. Their globetrotting shoots took them to London, Paris, Rome and the Bahamas and made them a tabloid fixture.
Just after the twins turned 18, news broke that Mary-Kate had checked into rehab for an unspecified health issue that was widely rumored to be anorexia. She never confirmed she had an eating disorder, though her weight loss had already drawn heavy public scrutiny.
In 2004, when the twins were 17, they sat for an interview in which Oprah Winfrey asked them their dress size, a question they awkwardly dodged. Mary-Kate later said she used to compare her looks unfavorably to her sister's. "Are you kidding me? I look in the mirror and I'm like: 'Why do you look pretty and I look ugly?'" she said on a CBS 48 Hours special.
Mary-Kate's marriage to Olivier Sarkozy
Even after retreating into a private life in fashion, Mary-Kate remained a subject of public fascination because of her age-gap romance and eventual divorce from Olivier Sarkozy, half-brother of former French president Nicolas Sarkozy. The couple began dating when she was 26 and he was 43, and stayed together for eight years before their marriage ended in 2020.
Reunion at Bob Saget's funeral
The Olsen twins' lasting bond with their old cast was on display at Bob Saget's funeral in 2022, after he was found dead at 65 in a hotel room. Medical examiners determined he had suffered head trauma. "They have concluded that he accidentally hit the back of his head on something, thought nothing of it and went to sleep," his family said in a statement.
John Stamos later described the "beautiful" reunion he had with the Olsen twins at Saget's memorial service, speaking on The Howard Stern Show. He said Mary-Kate and Ashley "got us all together and said: 'We love you. We loved our childhood. We're grateful for you guys. Thank you for making those eight years so beautiful for us. We have such fond memories. We love you.' And everybody just needed to hear that, and I think it was Bob doing it."
