The Row Less Traveled

**Lauren Sherman** (0:01)
The market and the culture has sort of changed in that sort of basic look. That quiet luxury look is not really what people want anymore.

**Peter Hamby** (0:14)
Welcome to The Powers That Be Daily, Puck's podcast focused on the intersection of Wall Street, Washington, Silicon Valley, and Hollywood, and the players who run it all. I'm Peter Hamby. It's Wednesday, August 12th. Today, I'm joined by Lauren Sherman, here to explain how the Olsen twins, that's right, Mary Kate and Ashley, became fashion titans with their high-end luxury brand, The Row.
But these days, The Row is facing a crossroads whether to keep competing with other luxury brands or train their sites on the middle brow mass market. Lauren also has notes on Karlie Kloss' media empire built around magazines, ID and life and what her plans are for reviving both publications. We'll discuss all that and much more on today's episode of The Powers That Be.
Happy Wednesday everybody and welcome to The Powers That Be. I'm joined by my pal, my friend here in Los Angeles, temporarily still on her Paris sabbatical, Lauren Sherman, host of Fashion People, a podcast named to one of Vulture's best podcasts of the year. The year's not even over yet. Maybe you'll get bounced by the end of the year, Lauren. Maybe The Powers That Be will kick you off. Also the author of Linesheet. We're going to talk today about The Row. You might know The Row from the Olsen Twins. We're also going to talk about New Leadership at ID Magazine. That would be the magazine once owned by Karlie Kloss and Jared Kushner. I don't know if they're good guys or bad guys at this point. We can talk about that in the B block, Lauren. Let's start with the Olsen Twins. I want to read, by the way, if you don't read John Kelly's backstory every week, you're not getting the purest distilled version of the Puck voice.

**Lauren Sherman** (2:14)
It's true.

**Peter Hamby** (2:16)
What John wrote about The Row.
Man, this is such good John Kelly. The older you get, the more you understand the apocryphal nature of that old F Scott Fitzgerald bromide about the paucity of second acts in American life. How else, after all, could you explain Ray Kroc's journey from salesman to hamburger franchise Glory or Jackie Kennedy's Odyssey from First Lady to book editor at Viking and Doubleday? He talks about Ari Emanuel. Anyway. Then we get from F Scott Fitzgerald to the Olsen twins. Then there are the Olsen twins. Somehow. I love John so much.
Then there are the Olsen twins who rose to ubiquity as child actresses before eventually founding their fashion company, The Row, in 2005 Anyway. A good little note about, by the way, this is another reason you should read the backstory. Sometimes I get all the puck emails. I need John Kelly to curate his favorites, and that's my way in sometimes. I learned about The Row from the backstory, not line sheet this week. I was on vacation. Forgive me. What's up with the Olsen twins? What's up with The Row? Are they hitting the skids?

**Lauren Sherman** (3:28)
I wouldn't say hitting the skids, but I would say, and look, it's a very successful business. The fact that a lot of people don't even know what full house is that by The Row, that might be stretching it. It has had a peak in popularity, and I'm sure it's on Netflix or Hulu or something.

**Peter Hamby** (3:46)
But there was a full house reboot on Netflix.

**Lauren Sherman** (3:48)
Yes, they were not involved. But essentially, The Row, it's been around for 20 years. They founded it 20 years ago, and it has become one of the biggest independent brands in fashion.
They're generating probably close to $400 million a year in sales, maybe even over that at this point. It probably depends on the year.
Almost every year, they've been profitable. They've built a really strong business that exploded during the pandemic because it was sort of like that everyone was wearing sweat pants and also a lot of people had a lot of extra money they didn't know what to do with. So they just bought cashmere sweat pants from The Row and a lot of other stuff. And they kind of became known for making the best version of the most simple thing. So like they have a version of a Teva sandal that costs like 1000 bucks, but it's amazing. And it's the best version of that sandal you'd ever get. And so they got really big. They got new investors in 2024 They raised at a $1.1 billion valuation from the Wertheimer family, the family that has owned Chanel for 100 years, the Betancourt-Meyers family, the L'Oreal, people behind L'Oreal, Imaginary Ventures, and also Lauren Santo Domingo's fund. So-