Sigrid Olsen is Peaking at 72
The designer on how adventure, starting over, and going viral have no age limit
There’s a group of women I like to think of as my friends. I’ve never met any of them, but you probably know them too: Anne Klein, Gloria Vanderbilt, Nicole Miller, Sigrid Olsen - to name a few. They’re the familiar names I always bump into at the thrift store, the omnipresent designers I imagine smiling back at me from the well-loved closet of an estate sale.
One place I don’t expect to see these ladies, however, is on my (admittedly cursed) 2 AM TikTok feed. And yet, a few weeks ago, there was Sigrid Olsen herself. The woman behind the label in a blue and green dress, swinging her arms to Fleetwood Mac on the dock of a boat for an audience of millions.
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The name and visionary behind a once multi-million dollar brand, 72-year-old Olsen is no stranger to reinvention. The fashion designer re-launched her namesake label five years ago as an independent, small batch brand, a departure from the mass market company bought (and later closed down) by the Liz Claiborne Corporation in 1999.
Olsen answered my call from the boat her and her partner, Mark, have been living on for the summer. A coastal New England scene slowly swayed behind her, her bright pink top striking against the cloudy sky. Olsen and I spoke while she was docked in Gloucester, Massachusetts, not far from the little shop where she first sold her designs as a young art school graduate in the 80’s. She’s come full circle in many ways, returning to her passion for nature and textiles as she explores the coast (and records social media content) in her 7th decade.
This interview has been edited for brevity.
Hi Sigrid! Thank you so much for taking the time to talk with me. You’ve been living on a boat all summer, but you’re still working!
Now with the internet, you can do anything from anywhere. I have free reign, I have my art supplies with me. It’s the ultimate in “out of office.”
As someone who is deep in the secondhand world, I come across your name and your pieces pretty often.
That’s so funny. [The Sigrid Olsen brand is] making its return appearance, it’s really kind of exciting for me to see it. It’s fun that it’s resonating with a lot of younger people too. On my TikTok that’s all I hear about, things that people have bought secondhand, which is wonderful.
One of your videos has over 1,500 comments from people sharing stories and photos of their favorite secondhand Sigrid Olsen piece - your page is overwhelmingly full of joy and hope. We all know that internet comment sections can be a really scary place, but your comments are so positive! Which is honestly really rare.
Is it? I just feel grateful that I’m not being hit with any kind of negativity. But I don’t know what you could be negative about, really.
People will always find a way. I’ve found that there’s typically a threshold, and once you reach a certain number of views things can often take a turn. But I don’t see that happening for the things you’ve posted.
It’s really nice. One of the things that it has done for me, going viral and being more open about my age, is that I’m owning it. In the fashion industry, being older is not usually looked upon positively. Especially in big business, in corporate, or large stores, they just want whatever the new young thing is.
The fact that my product is resonating with young people and my story is also giving young people hope [is great]. I’ve gotten a lot of comments like “I’m almost 30 and I’m freaking out!” and I’m like, “you haven’t even begun yet!”
I’m so grateful for the perspective that my years have given me, I don’t take things as seriously as I used to.
I’m lucky because I am known, so my business is a little bit more effortless than someone that is just starting out. But my current business is truly a start up. I started it on my own five years ago during COVID when I got back from India, and I don’t think it would be successful if people didn’t recognize my name.
Does this new evolution feel like a better fit for what you really want to do, what you truly want to put out with your art?
I’m a big believer in having space around things. That includes time, and bandwidth, and heart space. I can create my line now, but I can also teach yoga, I can also do my Monday night guided meditations. The reason I started doing all of that, the yoga and the retreats and the meditation, is because I had a non-compete after my company closed. I [legally] couldn’t sell clothes for two years. When the universe forces you into something you think you’re not gonna want, if you have some ingenuity, and faith in yourself, you can take that energy and channel it in a different way. Which is what I did back in 2008, and I’m still doing it now.
I like the balance now of the creative work, which is my designing, and my spiritual work, which is my yoga and retreats and connecting with other women, creating a community around creative well-being. They’re more balanced now, whereas that used to just be squeezed into this tiny little space that I had before, because I was so busy. Now I feel so much more balanced in my personal life, living closer to nature, more in rhythm with the natural tides.
Time is something that you’ve spoken a lot about online; it’s a central theme that you seem to come back to. This is clearly a lesson you’ve learned firsthand, you’re able to confidently tell people that they have time because you know. You’ve been through it - you’ve experienced that fear of running out of time, running out of space, feeling like you need to rush towards things.
I think of my creative drive as the little engine that runs me. I also call it my drug of choice, because I think we all have to find that thing that lights us up. If you’re lucky enough to find that thing, and recognize it, then just allow it to be the driving force without driving too hard. The word allow is very important.
You’ve heard of imposter syndrome. Well, I don’t have imposter syndrome because I know who I am, and I’ve been there. But I don’t want to disappoint people who think of me as this big name in fashion. I’m actually just a human being. And now I’m much more comfortable with that, more comfortable with aging, more comfortable in my own skin, more comfortable with my body, with my ability to connect with people. I don’t feel like I have to fulfill some role.
When I was in the corporate world, when I was a designer, I spent most of my time in meetings, less time designing. I had to kind of put a happy face on everything even when I could feel my company crumbling around me. Now that happy face is my true happy face, coming from the things that I’ve identified as necessary in my life - that’s nature, creativity, and connection with other people. Those are really the three top things.
I’m sure it must’ve been overwhelming at the peak of your business, especially after you were bought out. Once your brand was being manufactured by a much larger corporation, you must have been responsible for so much volume.
There was a lot of waste. In a department store like Saks, or Bloomingdales, or Nordstrom, they expect you to sell at least half of it at full price. But that’s only half of it. The rest gets marked down, and then eventually they have to offload it somewhere. I don’t know what they did with it all.
I wish I kept a lot of stuff!
Did you hold on to anything?
Not much. When I was in business and creating so much, we had monthly deliveries, it was just insane. I’m sample size, so I would get all of our samples. I would wear some of them, but really only a fraction of it.
I would clean out my closet at the end of every season and throw everything on the bed, and tell my friends to come over and take whatever they want. And when my mother was in a nursing home, I brought everything in a big garbage bag for all of the caregivers and the nurses there. They were so excited.
It thrills me to give stuff away, and to see other people enjoy it. Even if I’m not profiting from all of those comments, from all of the people who are wearing my vintage clothes, it makes me so happy to know that they’re being loved and used.
It’s a different type of profit.
Yeah, to know that all of this stuff isn’t being wasted, it’s being recycled.
Now I pride myself on being a small batch maker, which means I can’t go to China. Some of the sweaters that people are buying vintage, we made hundreds and hundreds of them. Now I’m just one little person - I’m funding [the business] myself, I don’t have VC money or corporate money or anything.
I’m doing small batches, mostly wovens. The embroidered and printed pieces I’m doing now, I’m doing in very small quantities so I don’t have waste at the end of the season. I try to gauge it just right.
I think that people genuinely forget that you continue to learn and grow throughout your entire life.
Do they really?
Yeah, I think a lot of people feel like there should be a point where they just know things. I think people forget to push themselves to continue being students through life.
You know, that’s true. Our society sets it up so that you enter college, you get your diploma, and you’re supposed to be ready for life. Or you get your master’s degree and you’re supposed to be ready for life. And the fact is, that’s just one kind of education. And there’s really no substitution for the actual living of life. You can’t get it from a book, you can’t even get it from a mentor. You have to put it into practice.
It’s kind of like yoga. I feel like yoga is a metaphor for life in general. A good yoga practice, or any good learning practice, is to not judge, to not compare yourself to other people but to continually seek what it unique about yourself, and [ask] what you bring to the world that is your life’s purpose. And that’s kind of where I’m at now. I was constantly questioning, what is my life’s purpose? And this following that I have on TikTok has really helped me understand what I can give back, having been through all of the things I’ve been through in my life.
Do you have anything recently that was a brand new life experience, maybe something you just learned recently?
This whole summer has been a brand new life experience. We bought [the boat] almost two years ago, and have been preparing for this [trip since]. Before we left I was trying to plan everything out. I was really kind of nervous about the two of us being able to handle it in not-so-great weather, but also on a regular basis - pulling into a dock, these are physical things I never did before.
I realized this summer that it had been a very long time since I did anything or gone anywhere that I hadn’t been before. I’ve always kind of stayed in my comfort zone, so this whole trip has been outside my comfort zone.
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Kelly, who is my assistant - she’s in charge of marketing - she has helped me in her wisdom of all of her 25 years. I think the viral nature of our TikToks even surprised her, it gave her acknowledgement that the direction she’s going in, and that I’m going in, is really of interest to people. That is another thing that I’ve never experienced before, and it’s kind of a revelation, owning my age and owning the fact that I’m not young and hip. I’m hip in my own way.
I think the traditional fashion world does seem to be very slowly embracing aging. You do see older women now on runways as of the last couple of years, there’s more editorial that features women above the traditional modeling age. How does that feel to see? Are you noticing that shift?
Oh yeah, definitely. I follow some of the older models on Instagram, I’m really interested in what are the supermodels from the 90’s doing now. Christy Turlington, Paulina Porizkova, Cindy Crawford. They’re letting their hair go grey, they’re finding beauty on the inside in a way that people kind of pooh-poohed back then. Of course they’ve got gorgeous bone structure to begin with anyway, and they have a sense of style, but there’s something about embracing who you are unapologetically that is the most beautiful.
I feel really lucky because I’m very healthy too. I have friends, a lot of women in my circle, that are struggling because of their health. And that’s at any age. Knock on wood - there’s no wood around me, but - I’m really grateful that I have good genes.
My dad was 98 when he died, he was 89 when he got married for the 4th time. He was teaching at NYU in his 80’s in their continuing ed program. My whole family showed me that you just don’t quit. My dad in his 90’s was like, “what should I do next?”
Here’s the thing that people don’t talk about: one of the number one traits that I see in people my age that keeps them young is curiosity. They ask questions. They don’t shy away from people who are different than they are, who are younger than they are, they genuinely want to hear.
I’m curious - how did you get into what you do? You’re very well spoken, you ask excellent, intelligent questions. If we were just sitting and having a glass of wine, I’d ask you how you got into it, what turns you on the most about it, where you see yourself going. Those are the kinds of questions that curious people ask. And they genuinely want to know. And I think that’s what opens people up to you.
How has your personal style and your approach to design evolved to where you are now?
We used to joke in my design team, “Where is she going in that outfit?” [laughs] Basically, what that means is designing clothes for what we do in life. I’m designing clothes for what I do in life. I need clothes these days that are uplifting, that make me feel happy, and not costume-y.
Back in the day I used to design outfits, now I design items. It’s different. I don’t know that we would still be designing outfits if I was in business now - I don’t know if everything has changed, or if it’s just me. But I always felt like, do people really want to buy head-to-toe from one person?
My personal style has changed because my lifestyle has changed, I really noticed that when I was in New York [for Fashion Week]. When I was [living] there, I wore primarily black, as everyone does. When I was in the corporate world [in the early 2000’s] the bootcut jeans, the Manolos, and the cropped Chanel jacket was the uniform. Now I have a few heels, but I can’t wear them anymore. My feet don’t want to. Then, I could run around New York in my heels and my pointy toes. But my feet have changed - my life has changed!
I don’t feel like I have to prescribe to any particular uniform, I just want to be comfortable, I want to be colorful. Whereas [back then] color was a very daring thing, only people like Betsey Johnson did color in fashion design.
And for me, it’s a respect of natural fibers, of ancient textile printing and dyeing techniques. That’s what interests me, so I’ve been exploring that more.
It sounds like you’re dressing for you, now, in a way that you didn’t feel like you were able to when you were younger.
Yes, it’s true.
Is that not the best thing, to wake up in the morning and ask yourself what do I want? What can I put on that makes me comfortable, that makes me happy, that allows me to live the life I want to live? I think a lot of people don’t actually do that.
I think that’s a very good point. Also, what can I eat today that’s going to make me happy?
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Okay, one last question! I’m turning 34 this weekend.
Happy birthday!
Thank you! If you were to meet with your 34-year-old self today, what would you say to her? What advice would you have for her?
34 was three years after I launched my fashion business. It was pretty exciting. I think what I would say to her is: breathe. Breathe, breathe, and don’t forget about yourself.
I had two little kids when I was 34, and the business was growing, and I felt like I couldn’t do anything right. I would say [to her] just do what you can, give it your best shot, and take your time. Don’t feel rushed, even though everybody around me was rushing me. I didn’t feel like I had a big window of time, most women at that age don’t. Especially if they have a family and a job, it’s hard to fit time for yourself in. But it’s really important to nourish yourself physically, spiritually, and emotionally, because you’ll pay for it later if you don’t.
To keep up with Sigrid Olsen on TikTok, you can follow her account here.
To browse Olsen’s latest designs, find her online shop & stockists here.
To read more about Olsen’s life and journey, pick up a copy of her memoir, My Life Redesigned.
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And because I had to know - I did ask Olsen if she makes all of her content herself. She told me that she records all of her own video, but sends it to Kelly to edit and format for TikTok. Not to say Olsen couldn’t go viral all on her own, but having a 25-year-old by your side definitely helps!