Orla Kiely
Encyclopedia
Orla Kiely is an Irish
fashion designer based in London
. Although she started work on hat design, she has since moved into design work on handbag
s and her designs have been featured on a variety of other items including kitchenware
and car
s. She received a Master's degree
from the Royal College of Art
where Harrods
purchased her exit collection. She worked with a variety of companies before setting up her own business.
while her mother studied science before being forced to give up work by her employers when she got married.
Kiely qualified as a textile designer from the National College of Art and Design
in Dublin and moved to New York to work for a wallpaper and fabric designer. She moved to England to work for Esprit
, while undertaking a Masters
at the Royal College of Art
in London, primarily in knitwear. 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
.
She moved into handbags after her father noted during her first London Fashion Week
that everyone was carrying a handbag, but no one was wearing a hat. In the late 90s, the idea of laminating cloth for handbags came to her, "At the time, no one was doing anything like it. Laminated fabric, in those days, meant tablecloths."
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!" Orla Kiely showed in London Fashion Week and secured her first export orders. The following year, they took the collection to Premiere Class.
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. Her fashion line has been seen on actresses such as Kirsten Dunst
and Alexa Chung.
She has been awarded the title of Visiting Professor of Textiles at the Royal College of Art.
as "the Queen of Prints", she first started work on hats, but soon moved into design work on handbag
s. Her designs have since been used for a variety of other objects, including kitchenware
, stationery
, furniture
, wallpaper
, and a range of Citroën DS3
cars. The cars feature Kiely's design work on the roofs, rear 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.
She has also designed a refillable water bottle, called the "Wottle". A joint collaboration between her and the water filter company Brita
, the bottle features her green-stem design. The bottles are made from high-density polyethylene, a recyclable plastic material, and are produced by a company in Suffolk
.
Her business operates out of a three-storey building in Clapham
, South London, near to her home. Her studio occupies the middle floor, chosen specifically because of the availability of light.
, and they have two sons, Robert and Hamish. They own a Labradoodle
named Olive.
Ireland
Ireland is an island to the northwest of continental Europe. It is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island on Earth...
fashion designer based in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
. Although she started work on hat design, she has since moved into design work on handbag
Handbag
A handbag, or purse in American English, is a handled medium-to-large bag that is often fashionably designed, typically used by women, to hold personal items such as wallet/coins, keys, cosmetics, a hairbrush, pepper spray, cigarettes, mobile phone etc....
s and her designs have been featured on a variety of other items including kitchenware
Kitchenware
Kitchenware include utensils, appliances, dishes, cookware, and so on for use in the kitchen.-See also:*Cookware and bakeware*Dishware*Drinkware*List of eating utensils*List of food preparation utensils*List of Japanese cooking utensils...
and car
Čar
Čar is a village in the municipality of Bujanovac, Serbia. According to the 2002 census, the town has a population of 296 people.-References:...
s. She received a Master's degree
Master's degree
A master's is an academic degree granted to individuals who have undergone study demonstrating a mastery or high-order overview of a specific field of study or area of professional practice...
from the Royal College of Art
Royal College of Art
The Royal College of Art is an art school located in London, United Kingdom. It is the world’s only wholly postgraduate university of art and design, offering the degrees of Master of Arts , Master of Philosophy and Doctor of Philosophy...
where Harrods
Harrods
Harrods is an upmarket department store located in Brompton Road in Brompton, in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, London. The Harrods brand also applies to other enterprises undertaken by the Harrods group of companies including Harrods Bank, Harrods Estates, Harrods Aviation and Air...
purchased her exit collection. She worked with a variety of companies before setting up her own business.
Biography
Orla credits her grandmother with being the creative influence in her life. Her father was an accountantAccountant
An accountant is a practitioner of accountancy or accounting , which is the measurement, disclosure or provision of assurance about financial information that helps managers, investors, tax authorities and others make decisions about allocating resources.The Big Four auditors are the largest...
while her mother studied science before being forced to give up work by her employers when she got married.
Kiely qualified as a textile designer from the National College of Art and Design
National College of Art and Design
The National College of Art and Design is a national art and design school in Dublin, Ireland.-History:Situated on Thomas Street, the NCAD started as a private drawing school and has become a national institution educating over 1,500 day and evening students as artists, designers and art educators...
in Dublin and moved to New York to work for a wallpaper and fabric designer. She moved to England to work for Esprit
Esprit Holdings
Esprit Holdings Limited is a publicly owned manufacturer of apparel, footwear, accessories, jewellery and housewares under the Esprit label. The company is headquartered in Kowloon, Hong Kong, and Ratingen , Germany. In the 2007–2008 business year, Esprit Holdings Limited generated a worldwide...
, while undertaking a Masters
Master's degree
A master's is an academic degree granted to individuals who have undergone study demonstrating a mastery or high-order overview of a specific field of study or area of professional practice...
at the Royal College of Art
Royal College of Art
The Royal College of Art is an art school located in London, United Kingdom. It is the world’s only wholly postgraduate university of art and design, offering the degrees of Master of Arts , Master of Philosophy and Doctor of Philosophy...
in London, primarily in knitwear. She displayed a range of hats in her exit show at the RCA, which were purchased by Harrods
Harrods
Harrods is an upmarket department store located in Brompton Road in Brompton, in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, London. The Harrods brand also applies to other enterprises undertaken by the Harrods group of companies including Harrods Bank, Harrods Estates, Harrods Aviation and Air...
. She did design work for Marks & Spencer
Marks & Spencer
Marks and Spencer plc is a British retailer headquartered in the City of Westminster, London, with over 700 stores in the United Kingdom and over 300 stores spread across more than 40 countries. It specialises in the selling of clothing and luxury food products...
and Habitat
Habitat (retailer)
Habitat Retail Ltd. is a retailer of household furnishings in the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Spain, and has franchised outlets in other countries. Founded in 1964 by Terence Conran, it was sold by the IKANO Group, owned by the Kamprad family, in December 2009 to Hilco, a restructuring...
.
She moved into handbags after her father noted during her first London Fashion Week
London Fashion Week
London Fashion Week is an apparel trade show held in London, England twice each year, in February and September. It is one of the "Big Four" fashion weeks, along with New York Fashion Week, Milan Fashion Week and Paris Fashion Week.-Organization:...
that everyone was carrying a handbag, but no one was wearing a hat. In the late 90s, the idea of laminating cloth for handbags came to her, "At the time, no one was doing anything like it. Laminated fabric, in those days, meant tablecloths."
Together with her husband, Dermott Rowan
Dermott Rowan
Dermott Rowan is the managing director and co-owner of Kiely Rowan Plc, the company that owns the fashion brands Orla Kiely and Olive & Orange. His wife Orla Kiely started the brand in the early nineties as a women’s bag designer....
, 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!" Orla Kiely showed in London Fashion Week and secured her first export orders. The following year, they took the collection to Premiere Class.
She was featured on a stamp
Postage stamp
A postage stamp is a small piece of paper that is purchased and displayed on an item of mail as evidence of payment of postage. Typically, stamps are made from special paper, with a national designation and denomination on the face, and a gum adhesive on the reverse side...
issued by the Republic of Ireland in July 2010, along with fellow designers Philip Treacy
Philip Treacy
Philip Treacy OBE is an Irish milliner.Born in Ahascragh,in the West of Ireland, he lived with his parents, seven brothers and sister across the road from the village church...
, John Rocha
John Rocha
John Rocha CBE, is a Hong Kong born fashion designer of Chinese and Portuguese descent who is based in Ireland.-Personal life:...
and Paul Costelloe
Paul Costelloe
Paul Costelloe is an Irish designer and artist who has been a leader in British and Irish fashion for the last 30 years. His father, a successful figure in the Irish rainwear market, was originally from Limerick and his mother, an American from New York. He was the youngest of a large family of...
. 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. Her fashion line has been seen on actresses such as Kirsten Dunst
Kirsten Dunst
Kirsten Caroline Dunst is an American actress, singer and model. She made her film debut in Oedipus Wrecks, a short film directed by Woody Allen for the anthology New York Stories...
and Alexa Chung.
She has been awarded the title of Visiting Professor of Textiles at the Royal College of Art.
Design work
Described by The GuardianThe Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
as "the Queen of Prints", she first started work on hats, but soon moved into design work on handbag
Handbag
A handbag, or purse in American English, is a handled medium-to-large bag that is often fashionably designed, typically used by women, to hold personal items such as wallet/coins, keys, cosmetics, a hairbrush, pepper spray, cigarettes, mobile phone etc....
s. Her designs have since been used for a variety of other objects, including kitchenware
Kitchenware
Kitchenware include utensils, appliances, dishes, cookware, and so on for use in the kitchen.-See also:*Cookware and bakeware*Dishware*Drinkware*List of eating utensils*List of food preparation utensils*List of Japanese cooking utensils...
, stationery
Stationery
Stationery has historically meant a wide gamut of materials: paper and office supplies, writing implements, greeting cards, glue, pencil case etc.-History of stationery:...
, furniture
Furniture
Furniture is the mass noun for the movable objects intended to support various human activities such as seating and sleeping in beds, to hold objects at a convenient height for work using horizontal surfaces above the ground, or to store things...
, wallpaper
Wallpaper
Wallpaper is a kind of material used to cover and decorate the interior walls of homes, offices, and other buildings; it is one aspect of interior decoration. It is usually sold in rolls and is put onto a wall using wallpaper paste...
, and a range of Citroën DS3
Citroën DS3
The Citroën DS3 is a supermini, produced by French manufacturer Citroën from 2009. This is the first car in the new DS range from Citroën. It was first hinted by the concept car Citroën DS Inside. This range of vehicle shares no common feature with, and is in no way the successor to, the Citroën DS...
cars. The cars feature Kiely's design work on the roofs, rear tailgate
Tailgate
Tailgate is an American English word denoting the door or 'gate' at the back of a wagon, pickup truck, SUV or other similar type of vehicle that is hinged at the bottom and can be opened for the convenience in loading cargo into the rear of the vehicle...
and a signature in the middle of the rear spoiler. The interior features pattern work on the carpet mats, and on the seat headrests.
She has also designed a refillable water bottle, called the "Wottle". A joint collaboration between her and the water filter company Brita
Brita
Brita GmbH is a German company founded in 1966 by Heinz Hankammer with headquarters in Taunusstein, Germany, that specializes in water filtration products. The company has production facilities in Germany, Great Britain, India, and Switzerland...
, the bottle features her green-stem design. The bottles are made from high-density polyethylene, a recyclable plastic material, and are produced by a company in Suffolk
Suffolk
Suffolk is a non-metropolitan county of historic origin in East Anglia, England. It has borders with Norfolk to the north, Cambridgeshire to the west and Essex to the south. The North Sea lies to the east...
.
Her business operates out of a three-storey building in Clapham
Clapham
Clapham is a district in south London, England, within the London Borough of Lambeth.Clapham covers the postcodes of SW4 and parts of SW9, SW8 and SW12. Clapham Common is shared with the London Borough of Wandsworth, although Lambeth has responsibility for running the common as a whole. According...
, South London, near to her home. Her studio occupies the middle floor, chosen specifically because of the availability of light.
Personal life
She is married to Dermott RowanDermott Rowan
Dermott Rowan is the managing director and co-owner of Kiely Rowan Plc, the company that owns the fashion brands Orla Kiely and Olive & Orange. His wife Orla Kiely started the brand in the early nineties as a women’s bag designer....
, and they have two sons, Robert and Hamish. They own a Labradoodle
Labradoodle
A Labradoodle is a crossbred dog created by crossing the Labrador Retriever and the Standard or Miniature Poodle.-History:The first known use of the term "Labradoodle" was by Sir Donald Campbell to describe his Labrador/Poodle cross dog in his 1955 book, "Into the Water Barrier"...
named Olive.