Quick primer, in case you aren't familiar with the Olsen twins' design ventures. Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen, yes, the twins who rose to fame playing Michelle Tanner on Full House, run a commercially and critically successful fashion label called The Row. Being a prestigious label to work for, interns clamored to work for it, but they apparently got a lot more (or less) than just a couple bullet points on their resume.
The Row is being sued for not paying 40 former interns, Page Six reports. The lead plaintiff is Shahista Lalan, who worked as a design intern at the Row and reported directly to the label's head technical designer, who Lalan has some stories about. "She was very demanding," Lalani told Page Six. "I was doing the work of three interns. I was talking to her all day, all night." Lalani claims that the work caused her to check into the hospital for dehydration at one point during her half a year working at The Row.
The suit brought against The Row accuses it of abusing the intern workforce and making them do the work of full-time employees. "You’re like an employee, except you’re not getting paid," Lalani said. "They’re kind of mean to you. Other interns have cried. I’d see a lot of kids crying doing coffee runs, photocopying stuff." Lalani claims that she worked 50 hours week while interning with the label and didn't get a single dollar or college credit.
The Olsen's Dualstar Entertainment Group, which The Row is under the umbrella of, believes that it will be vindicated in court. "The allegations in the complaint filed against Dualstar are groundless, and Dualstar will vigorously defend itself against plaintiff’s claims in court, not before the media," Annett Wolf, a spokesman for the company said, according to WWD. "Dualstar is confident that once the true facts of this case are revealed, the lawsuit will be dismissed in its entirety."
In a plot twist, the former intern Lelani has graduated from The New School's Parson School of Design and launched her own label since departing The Row in 2012, according to WWD.
