From a tiny ’90s fashion accessories collection to a global lifestyle brand, Orla Kiely’s distinctive prints have travelled far in the 30 years since the Irish designer established her company at her kitchen table. Today her retro botanical designs in a mid-century colour palette have become modern classics.
Orla Kiely ready to wear AW11 © Venetia Scott
“Somehow – accidentally – we have ownership of this kind of vintage style,” says Kiely, of the brand she set up in the mid-1990s with her husband Dermott Rowan from their London flat. “I think the reason it worked is that we have always kept it very modern, simplifying designs and motifs so they’re easy to look at. Although it’s not as easy to create these prints as it might look.”
Kiely, 64, grew up in Ireland and, after studying print and textile design in Dublin, moved to London in the mid-’80s, where she later received a master’s degree in knitted textiles from the Royal College of Art. Her first designs were hats, but her breakthrough came with the innovative laminated-textile tote bags that were to become her signature. They were covered in the now unmistakable leaf and flower designs in tonal colours – ’60s brights and chalky ’70s hues that drew on the mustard gorse, muted greens, browns and grey skies of Kiely’s childhood on the border of County Wicklow and County Dublin, Ireland.
