How even the love of a princess couldn’t save Orla Kiely’s empire
Ambitions too lofty: How Orla Kiely was left standing in the ruins of her crumbling design empire 21 years on
FROM Shankill village to the King’s Road, Orla Kiely’s rise to fashion royalty was unsurprising for those who knew her as a child in Co. Dublin.
Born in 1963, art was her ‘big subject’ as a child at the Loreto Convent school in Bray and her family supported her creative side from early on.
Her ‘young at heart’ grandmother would drive from Galway in her Mini and inspire Orla with her painting, knitting and rug-making.
‘She was a real doer,’ Orla told RTÉ in 2013. ‘I like to think I’ve got that same busy quality – always doing things, never stopping.
‘Both my parents have been very supportive and always encouraged me to follow a creative career because that’s what I loved.’
As a teenager she wanted to be an architect but, inspired by her rural seaside surroundings growing up, she chose a career in fashion and design instead.
‘I loved sewing, I loved drawing, I loved making things,’ she told RTÉ. ‘I guess I was always going to do something creative. The colours in nature affected my tastes, I do think.’
After graduating from Dublin’s National College of Art and Design in 1984, Kiely moved to London where she gained a masters in textiles from the Royal College of Art.
During her exit show from the RCA in 1993, Harrods commissioned the collection of hats she had designed.
By 1994, she and husband Dermott Rowan had gone into business together, having been married for just over a year.
They sold hats until her father was struck by a lightbulb moment during her first exhibition at fashion week: she should focus on bags, a more popular and sustainable market. ‘Look around, Orla, no one is wearing a hat but every woman is carrying a handbag,’ he told her.
By day, Orla worked as a designer and consultant for high street brands such as Marks & Spencer and Esprit before working on her own wares in the evenings from her office: a two-bedroom flat in Wandsworth, south London.
Dermott, a financial controller at engineering giant GKN, gave up his job to head up the company’s accounts and source production.
It wasn’t long before wipeclean laminate bags became the staple of her eponymous brand and in 1997 she developed a capsule collection for Debenhams. The next year she opened her own design studio in Battersea.
‘I can remember the first sketches and the first trade show at Première Classe in Paris,’ she told The Gloss magazine in May. ‘The brand beside our stand said to Dermott it was like a Boeing 747 landing from Tokyo, there was so much interest.
‘My first drawing was very simple but it had strength. Our original Japanese partners advised that we hold on to it as the brand identity and we remembered this advice.’
Dresses adorned with her trademark stem design were next in the late 1990s and when the Duchess of Cambridge began wearing her designs in 2011, sales soared by 20%. The ambitious couple quickly capitalised on this, expanding even further in the US and Asia with a flagship 214 sq m store in New York and a store opening in Taiwan.
Orla was lauded in fashion circles as her dresses sold out, and in 2011 she was awarded an honorary OBE for services to the fashion industry in Britain, where she bases her business.
Dermott told the Financial Times in that year: ‘I’m in the shadow of a colossus, a nice place to be. She is so good on business. She’s got a fantastic brain, probably the most intelligent woman you will ever meet.’
His wife added: ‘We are quite complementary. Dermott is good in a crisis. I’m a bit more panicky. I find him reassuring if I’m getting nervous.’
Only four months ago, she insisted: ‘I’ve always followed my own path when it comes to business. I don’t want to compromise, ever.’
One wonders how the pair are holding up today as their business empire crumbles around them in very public fashion. On Monday, Orla was signing copies of her book A Life In Pattern for fans at a meet and greet.
An exhibition by the same name, which has been running since May at London’s Fashion and Textile Museum, ends on Sunday. Ahead of the exhibition she told Vogue: ‘It is very exciting and an enormous privilege through which we can show the dynamic power of design while looking positively to the future with a clear vision and global identity established.’
This echoed Rowan’s 2011 sentiment, when he told the Financial Times: ‘I think we know where we’re going. We’re going to keep growing.’
Lofty ambitions seem to have got the better of their familyfriendly brand.
A Kildare Village store opened to much fanfare less than a year ago, after the family relocated the business headquarters from Clapham Common in south London to the exclusive Fitzrovia area.
They still maintain a family home in Clapham, a flat converted from an unfinished building more than ten years ago and decked out with the matriarch’s own designs.
The couple’s two sons, Robert and Hamish, are in their early twenties. While Robert studied history and politics in Manchester, Hamish has inherited his mother’s creative gene. ‘At the moment I think he is going to be creative for himself,’ she said in an interview last year.