Orla Kiely

Orla Kiely is an Irish fashion designer based in London. While she began her career designing hats, she has since moved on to design work on handbags and a variety of other items, including kitchenware and cars. She received a Master's degree from the Royal College of Art where Harrods purchased her exit collection. She worked with a several companies before setting up her own business.

Biography

Orla credits her grandmother with being the creative influence in her life. Her father was an accountant, while her mother studied science before being forced to give up work by her employers after she married.^[1]

Kiely qualified as a textile designer at the National College of Art and Design in Dublin and moved to New York to work for a wallpaper and fabric designer.^[2] She moved to England to work for Esprit, while studying for a Master's at the Royal College of Art in London,^[3] primarily in knitwear.^[2] She displayed a range of hats in her exit show at the RCA, which were purchased by Harrods. She did design work for Marks & Spencer and Habitat.^[3]

She began designing handbags after her father noted during her first London Fashion Week that everyone was carrying a handbag, but no one was wearing a hat.^[4] In the late 1990s, she had the idea to laminate cloth for handbags: "At the time, no one was doing anything like it. Laminated fabric, in those days, meant tablecloths."^[2]

Together with her husband, Dermott Rowan, she formed The Orla Kiely Partnership in 1997. Her husband explained in an interview, "Nothing was planned, the whole thing started by accident. Orla was consulting for other companies and designing her own collection at the weekend, which she would give to me to organise. We had this chaotic situation where deliveries of her designs would come into our apartment and if I didn't get them out by 5pm, there was nowhere to sit!"^[3] Orla Kiely showed in London Fashion Week and secured her first export orders. The following year, they took the collection to Premiere Class.^[5]

She was featured on a stamp issued by the Republic of Ireland in July 2010, along with fellow designers Philip Treacy, John Rocha and Paul Costelloe. It is an 82c stamp, showing her name in large orange letters at the top along with an image of a handbag with her leaf design against a white background.^[6] Her fashion line has been seen on actresses such as Kirsten Dunst^[3] , Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge^[3] and Alexa Chung.

She has been awarded the title of Visiting Professor of Textiles at the Royal College of Art.^[1]

Design work

Orla Kiely design work on the back of a London bus

Kiely was described by The Guardian as "the Queen of Prints."^[7] Her designs have since been used for a variety of other objects, including kitchenware,^[8] stationery, furniture,^[3] wallpaper,^[1] and a range of Citroën DS3 cars. The cars feature Kiely's design work on the roofs, tailgate and a signature in the middle of the rear spoiler. The interior features pattern work on the carpet mats and on the seat headrests.^[9]

She has also designed a refillable water bottle called the "Wottle", which is a collaboration with the water filter company Brita. The bottle features her green-stem design and is made from high-density polyethylene, a recyclable plastic material, and produced by a company in Suffolk.^[10]

Her business operates out of a three-storey building in Clapham, South London, near her home. Her studio occupies the middle floor, chosen specifically because of the availability of light.^[7]

Personal life

She is married to Dermott Rowan, and they have two sons, Robert and Hamish. They own a Labradoodle named Olive.^[6][7]

In popular culture

In 2010 Kiely was one of six contemporary, internationally renowned Irish fashion designers featured on a set of Irish postage stamps issued by An Post. The other designers featured were Paul Costelloe, Louise Kennedy, John Rocha, Philip Treacy and Lainey Keogh.^[11]

Bibliography

• Pattern. London: Coran Octopus. 2010. ISBN 978-1-84091-553-2. 

References