She is an actress, a designer and a fashion icon. Luke Crisell meets the very private Mary - Kate Olsen to discover what influences her unique sense of style

The second-oldest cemetery in Manhattan is a small, well-maintained affair: the names of those interred here are inscribed on tablets lining the walls. Hazelnut trees dot the lawn. Once an undistinguished plot of land on the Lower East Side, the graveyard now abuts the tiled patio of a boutique hotel where Mary - Kate Olsen has decided we should meet. ‘I remember this place used to be so cool,’ she says, raising her eyes to the cloudless sky. ‘But then they started letting everyone come here.’ She goes to take a third cigarette from the Marlboro Red packet on the table but it’s empty. She shakes it, clearly frustrated, and picks up the butt of the last one, which seems to placate her. ‘Somebody actually threatened to throw a drink in my face not too long ago when I was sitting here with two friends. It was some drunk guy who had been here since noon.’

However over-populated the hotel might be in the evening, now, at the beginning of a soporific afternoon, we’re alone. The patio is tranquil and Olsen, curled up in the middle of a wicker couch, is serene, her dramatic features partially obscured by the John Lennon-style sunglasses that cover half her face. In her current outfit, she vaguely resembles a pirate, albeit a very small one.

Mary - Kate could probably fit a few close friends inside her orange vintage flannel shirt, open to the navel and which, on her barely five-foot frame, seems almost Brobdingnagian. The sheer quantity of precious metals she is wearing would be preposterous on anyone else. Around her neck are four necklaces; on her tiny hands are five huge rings (one of which opens like a locket to reveal a skull being strangled by a gold serpent); and around her wrists and up her arms are about 30 bracelets and bangles, which, at one point become entangled. (‘Oh my God, I’ve handcuffed myself!’ she says, laughing.) The outfit is rounded off by black suede Pedro Garcia heels and black Kova&T leggings. ‘I’ve actually been wearing this for about the past 10 days,’ she says, laughing, the jewellery jingling gently on her arms. ‘It’s natural for me to throw on whatever I’m going to wear and not think twice about it.’