Having grown up eating Svensk Pølseret, taking Christmas trips to Tivoli Gardens, and swimming in Copenhagen’s canals, Princess Olympia of Greece and Denmark also picked up a love for Danish street style – something she’s brought to her post at Moda Operandi. Now settled in New York, she talks turning 30, walking runways for Gucci and Conner Ives, and why you might find her staring at you on the NYC subway
Princess Olympia of Greece and Denmark would like it on the record that she is, as far as she’s concerned, still in her mid-twenties. “It's so funny because I still feel like I'm 25, so I'm like, how am I 30?” she says, laughing down a Zoom call from her apartment in New York, and wearing, by her own admission, “a tracksuit, sorry.”
She could easily pass for 21 and the tracksuit in question is actually a grey wool co-ord, sans hoodie, in case you’re wondering. It is 3:30pm on a Monday in Manhattan, her Vogue Scandinavia cover shoot wrapped a couple days ago, and she is enjoying a much-deserved post-fashion-month reset.
Olympia turned 30 on 25 July, and wanted to keep it lowkey. “This is the first time where I was like, I actually just want to be 30. I just wanted it to start.” She was in Antiparos, hadn't arranged anything, and her mother, Marie-Chantal, Crown Princess of Greece and Princess of Denmark, overruled her. “My mom was like, you have to have a 30th birthday. So we took over this little taverna. Friends flew in, some friends were there already, and it was just really fun. It was the first time I didn't plan anything. My parents planned it all, and it was really sweet.” Her sole request? “A massive cake covered in raspberries.”
For someone who has been told how to behave and what to do their whole life, she's never really ever been that way to me. She's such a warm, big-hearted, cosy grandmother.
Princess Olympia of Greece and Denmark
Turtleneck t-shirt, €765, Blazer, €2,685, Belt, €400. All Michael Kors Collection. Photo: Landon McMahon