Mary-Kate Olsen will be featured on the cover of Elle Magazine with the July 2008 issue of the pub hits newsstands next week. Elle.com has released several outtakes from MK’s Elle photoshoot. More Mary-Kate for Elle after the fold.

“Mary-Kate is fragile yet strong,” says Diane von Furstenberg, whom Olsen interviewed for the upcoming coffee-table book Influence, an anthology of interviews, photographs, and artwork that she and Ashley are compiling as part of their publishing agreement with Razorbill, an imprint of Penguin’s Young Readers Group. Von Furstenberg, perhaps seeing a lot of herself in Mary-Kate—a fierce ambition tempered by empathy; a talent for business tethered to an artistic spirit—has become a kind of mentor for her. “She’s an old soul in a very young girl,” the designer says. “Hers is a story that has just begun.”