Influence

Product Information

Ashley Olsen, designer, entrepreneur, actress and style icon, is one of the most influential young women in the fashion and entertainment industries.

Lots of beautiful, high-quality photos of the Olsens as well as of famous people and LOTS of fashion items - drawings, exhibits, artwork, etc. Although I did enjoy reading about some of the artists and designers and their creative processes, this was way too self indulgent.

I mean they are girls and they like fashion, aesthetics, the feel of material, the fetishism and eroticism of it. They decided to interview rich and famous people for this book, which looks like a cross between a hard cover coffee table book and Interview magazine. Each designer is interviewed from a personal perspective - we are shown the conversation between the interviewer and the interviewee and it feels very personal and like you're there with them. I started instantly flipping through the pages, the pictures where beautiful and the people they interviewed where great people. You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice.

My pal Melanie here got me onto this book, and I have to admit, the Olsen's oddly twisted cherubic visages kind of intrigue me, so I thought I'd go to the library and check the thing out.The Olsen twins are trying to come across as "working their asses off" (they say this several times) and as "self taught", but really, who are they trying to fool?

How very clever- there's about a couple of pages of them writing about them, many photos, and the rest are interviews with the artists and designers they admire and are inspired by. When I heard last year that the Olsen twins would be releasing a book chronicling their fashion influences, my mind immediately flashed towards the Paris Hilton-penned Confessions of an Heiress - after all, it seemed like another set of tabloid darlings were trying to add “author” to their resumés. I believe that if they would've been thought through and prepared with a bit more details, the full potential of storytelling would have been taken advantage of, rather than just barely touched on the surface. But, to their credit, Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen’s coffee table book, Influence, is not another collection of gaudy images depicting Chihuahuas in pink tutus. It has a great energy as it features people and ideas from all over the world and the work, both of the girls and the guts they had to sit across the table from some pretty powerful people as well as that of the individual artists, is inspiring.What's also cool is that they interview each other towards the end and it's accompanied by a show-and-tell fashion story featuring their favorite stuff/accessories. I really liked the premise of this book in that all of the interviews and ideas tied into an overall theme as large as "influence.