Mary-Kate and Ashley Open Flagship Store for Their Fashion Label

Good news for all you very expensive fashion-loafers enthusiasts: Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen have just opened up a flagship store for their luxury label, The Row. It is located on Melrose Place in Los Angeles, and it used to be a salon in which they got their hair cut back when they were girl detectives. Most notably, as the Daily Mail points out with proper enthusiasm, the store “boasts its own SWIMMING POOL.”

The brick and mortar location is yet another accomplishment for the line, which has been heralded as a success by high-end retailers (this year, it was also nominated for Accessories Designer of the Year by the Council of Fashion Designers of America). And now that The Row is an Official Success, the line’s prices reflect that: MK&A would like to sell you a $280 t-shirt and a $1,300 blazer, for example — but, hey, whatever, that’s better than that $39,000 backpack from 2011.

“That was obviously a very special bag to us but that didn’t represent the entire range,” Mary-Kate told the Wall Street Journal, when asked about the alligator skin back-to-school accessory. “We’ve now spent a couple of years also retraining the customer that that’s not the only product that’s available.” (How exactly did they retrain us? Did they toss a luxury tank top at every person who said, “Actually, some of their backpacks are not quite that costly”?)

Anyway, we’ve all watched as the Olsens elevated their “haute ragamuffin” style considerably in their reign as fashion icons, and now they’ve grown wise beyond their style-years. Accordingly, their target customer is now a sophisticated woman in her 40s or 50s — which is why they opted to feature older models in a recent look book and also why it’s okay for them to produce goods that basically no 20-something could afford. After all, 40-year-olds are waaaaay likelier to have thousands of dollars lying around to spend on luxury capes and what not.

And what they’re doing is working — in 2009, the New York Times estimated that the company’s sales were around $10 million. That’s, like, three alligator backpacks and a cashmere pashmina!

Next up for the pair: more growth. They’re planning to launch a New York store (WITH A POOL, HOPEFULLY), a shoe line feat. menswear-inspired mules and loafers, and also menswear. All that customer-training has paid off.