Orla Kiely clothing may be gone... but accessories remain
IRISH shops will continue to stock Orla Kiely handbags and accessories despite the company announcing that it is to shut down its clothing line.
Ms Kiely – famed as the Queen of Prints whose fans include Kate Middleton – announced the sudden closure of her online fashion business and her shops in Kildare Village and London on Tuesday.
However, the lucrative bags and home accessories will still be sold in shops including Arnotts, Debenhams, Kilkenny Design and McElhinneys of Ballybofey, Co. Donegal.
A spokesman for Debenhams said: ‘The Orla Kiely website stated this morning that the Orla Kiely Home and Design licensing business will not be impacted by the closure of the fashion business. Debenhams stocks a small selection of Orla Kiely bags and wallets.’ A spokesman for Kilkenny Design said: ‘We still stock the products in most stores.’
Despite the closure of the fashion business, the homewares end of the company was still trading yesterday.
Workers said they were escorted out of stores earlier this week, moments after being told by CEO Ms Kiely, 55, they were losing their jobs. The company’s stores on London’s King’s Road and Seven Dials, and in Kildare Village, have closed.
A source said: ‘It wasn’t sent out in an official email or anything, but was spread through word of mouth. Around lunchtime we were all called together where the CEO told us we were all out of a job.
‘We’re paid on the 27th of each month and we were told the company can’t pay us for the past three weeks and we’d have to try and file for redundancy. Some people just burst into tears.
‘Chief designers just grabbed their bags and walked straight out without saying anything. We were then escorted out of the building. None of us saw this coming. They closed off the website the other week and said there was an issue with the payment gateway. But they must have known what was going on... we feel like we’ve been done over. Now I’m struggling to find the money to pay the rent.’
London-based receivers David Rubin and Partners has been appointed to wind up the fashionwear end of the business, a spokesman for Ms Kiely said.
‘Kiely Rowan Plc, the retail and wholesale fashion business of Orla Kiely, has ceased trading as of Monday 17 September 2018,’ he added.
‘Having carefully considered the options, the directors of Kiely Rowan Plc have concluded that the business should be placed into creditors’ voluntary liquidation following various challenges that have faced the company over the past few years, both in the UK and abroad.
‘Orla Kiely’s Home and Design licensing business will not be impacted, and its selection of accessories and homewares will continue to be sold through its distribution partners.’
Fans reacted with sadness to the news. One Twitter user wrote: ‘Orla Kiely and those amazing prints have been part of my life for so long and given me great joy along the way.’
Set up in 1995 with her husband Dermott, the designer’s brand is best known for its vintage 1970sinspired prints. At its height it turned over more than €10million. But fashion experts warned the ‘middle-market’ range had struggled against online competition and the rise of discount retailers. The business’s problem was it had not ‘reinvented’ itself, according to fashion and lifestyle commentator Karine Laudort.
‘Some people in the royal family have loved her patterns but just because a celebrity endorses doesn’t make you money.
‘Established brands have a perception that just because they get endorsements, they’re doing well. It is a big eye-opener for other people in that industry,’ she said.
‘None of us saw this coming’
STANDING on my kitchen worktop, beside the kettle, the knife sharpener and the basil plant, is an orange container full of oversized implements that are too big to fit in the cutlery drawer. You know the kind of thing – slotted spoons, spatulas, tongs and the like.
The container itself is predominantly orange, with a tiny background pattern in white. It’s from the Orla Kiely homeware range and I bought it in the January sale in my local Kilkenny shop. I really like it – but not particularly because it is an Orla Kiely design. Rather, I bought it for two reasons – one, it was the exact colour I wanted and two, it was less than half price in the sale. Even then it was more than €20. To pay over €40 for it would have been ridiculous.
Nonsense
Although I’ve never been a huge fan of Orla Kiely’s designs, I think she is supremely talented and has brought a great deal of joy to a great many people – be it with her original handbags, or her dresses, or, in more recent years, her homeware collection, from spoon holders to mugs to wallpaper and bed linen.
To learn yesterday, therefore, that her business was in difficulty – although it’s still unclear as to the specifics – was undoubtedly sad news. Hopefully, she will continue to design and prosper, albeit without her retail outlets in London and Kildare Village, for many years to come.
I have never bought into the Orla Kiely brand because, well, the designs just don’t appeal.
And they are so ubiquitous nowadays that the notion that they are somehow ‘special’ has long gone out the window. I feel exactly the same about the Cath Kidston products.
But I know a couple of people who buy Orla Kiely – and other designers – simply because of the name. They like to be seen whipping out their Orla Kiely purse (with that leaf design) or giving themselves a quick spray of their ‘celebrity’ perfume (‘Fame’ by Lady Gaga is the current favourite), or stooping to light their Paul Costelloe or Jo Malone candle just as the dinner guests arrive.
What is it about celebrity products these days, and about designers who were renowned for their expertise in, say, fashion, who are now churning out towels and candles and lamps to beat the band?
It’s not the designers’ fault. To them it’s business. It’s us, the mugs who fall for it all, who are to blame for perpetuating this celebrity-product nonsense. For why would you not buy a perfectly acceptable candle in Dunnes Stores for €5, instead of wandering across the shop and forking out €15 for one with the cachet of the Paul Costelloe name attached to it?
And let’s be honest, that’s not the worst of the pricing that you encounter when you go the celebrity designer route.
The Jo Malone brand (now under Estée Lauder ownership) is at least still doing what it always did. It’s still all about fragrance – it hasn’t diversified into handbags or hats. And it’s hugely successful. Confession time. I use the same Jo Malone fragrance every day and have done so for many years. Red Roses. It’s the only perfume I ever use – simply because I love it. But I have no time for all the fragrance combination and layering malarkey that the Jo Malone people advocate so that they can get you to fork out for two or three expensive perfumes instead of one.
Nor have I ever, nor, indeed, will I ever, purchase a Jo Malone candle. At €52, it’s madness. I actually have one in my bathroom at the moment which was passed on to me by a friend. You wouldn’t know it was Jo Malone, though, because I have it turned around so that the label faces the wall.
Obsessed
Celebrity shopping is just the latest aspect of society’s unfortunate love affair with celebrity culture. It’s not actually about the product itself, it’s about the name attached to it. It’s about a society that is obsessed with celebrity. Not quality or workmanship or individuality. Just celebrity.
Don’t get me wrong, there are some ‘names’ in the fashion world that I greatly respect and would love to have the wherewithal to own just one of their fashion pieces. Not because of the name, but because their work is genuinely beautiful.
I owned an expensive pair of sunglasses for ten years. I bought them after swapping cheap pair for cheap pair over the years and feeling that my eyes, which are very sensitive to sunlight, were suffering. I hated all the ‘bling’ ones like those Chanel sunglasses with the intertwined Cs shouting – ‘Look, I’m wearing Chanel’. So I settled on a Paul Smith pair – understated, and with the designer’s name used very small – and only on the inside of one leg of the glasses. Perfect!
Beyoncé
One of the latest retail celebrity wheezes is perfume. Whether that’s a bottle of Fame by Lady Gaga or Curious by Britney Spears, or Glow by Jennifer Lopez, or Heat by Beyoncé, or any of the David Beckham unisex fragrances, it’s the name that sells. So much so, in fact that there are now more than 20 Beckham fragrances, while Beyoncé has 14 under her belt and Rihanna is on her tenth.
And Britney Spears is fairly cleaning up, having sold more than 500 million bottles of her Curious fragrance alone. But will Curious still be selling in 30, or 40 years’ time? Of course it won’t, because Britney will have no selling power then.
Unlike the classic scents – perfumes like Chanel No 5, on the market since the 1920s, Diorissimo, selling since the 1950s or Nina Ricci’s L’Air du Temps, around since the 1940s and still worn by my mother – all these celebrity fragrances are just like the celebrity world that society so embraces nowadays – ephemeral and throwaway.
The current craze for ‘fake’ designer handbags is the ultimate proof that it’s the name and not the product that has now taken precedence. The workmanship isn’t important, the quality of the leather, or the stitching or the beautiful lining simply count for nothing.
Once the design is a believable rip-off, with the name a prominent feature, that’s all that matters. The skill and the talent that produced the original are forgotten.
Every time I see someone with an in-your-face designer product, I always smile to myself and think of my father.
All his working life was spent in the drapery business, in what was then called ‘gentlemen’s outfitting’. He was the buyer for the best department store in town, a place that stocked very fine quality men’s clothing.
Way back then, ‘names’ were beginning to appear on the outside of garments, rather than discreetly placed within.
‘It’s ridiculous,’ my father used to say. (Levi jeans was a particular bête noire.) ‘Everybody running around with those labels for all to see – Levi and the like. We shouldn’t be paying them, they should be paying us for the publicity!’ How right he was.