Queen of prints who failed to move with the times
Orla Kiely was a victim of her own success. The Irish designer was known as the ‘ Queen of prints’ thanks to her distinctive blocky 1970s-style patterns which are now instantly recognisable.
The flower-like graphic she created in the 1990s became the company logo and featured on almost every product she made, most iconically on the line of laminated handbags which propelled her to fame.
Her prints and patterns also made their way on to womenswear, with the Orla Kiely clothing line worn by everyone from alexa Chung to Kirsten Dunst – though it was the royals who were her most fervent champions.
In fact, her prints became so recognisable that she is currently being celebrated at a dedicated exhibition – Orla Kiely: a life In Pattern – at london’s Fashion and Textile Museum.
But those signature flowers have also been her undoing.
You know the feeling of turning up to a party and someone else is wearing the same dress as you?
For a while you didn’t need to be at a party to find an Orla Kiely print – you’d match your friend’s kettle, or the car in their driveway.
Because Orla licensed her print too widely, it started to appear on everything from £30 blinds to £ 7.49 coasters and £2 hand towels.
Those graphic prints were everywhere on everything, and women simply didn’t want the same prints on their biscuit tins and their blouses. It even appeared on the back of buses and a Citroen DS3.
and since the prints never changed, you’d also never want or need to replace that biscuit tin, or those blinds or towels.
The pity is that her clothes were beautiful, mainly thoughtfully cut dresses and shirts in pretty feminine prints. But they were too expensive for what they were – £300 for a black smock dress was typical – when you know you could buy a cushion bearing the same print for a fraction of that.
Her partnerships with brands such as Halfords and Clarks (understandable, of course, for a struggling company looking for revenue) only diluted the brand further.
The value of anything in fashion comes from its uniqueness. No matter how beautiful something is, if everyone has it, it becomes a uniform and we don’t want it – and Orla Kiely has learned this lesson the hard way.
The other problem was that the brand just didn’t move with the times. Having made her name with that signature print, Orla seemed unable or unwilling to try something new – which meant it never opened up to a new generation of shoppers. That meant that it came – rightly or wrongly – to represent a generation that are now the wrong side of cool. Many now associate it with their mums, aunts and grandparents; lovingly, but not in a way that drives sales.
Even the Duchess of Cambridge and the ‘Kate effect’ – she’s been spotted in the label’s clothes more than once in the past 12 months – couldn’t save the brand.
In the world of fast fashion shoppers want something new, something different, something that changes dramatically each season and that’s not Orla Kiely’s thing.
She is undoubtedly one of the greatest print designers in the world. What a shame she just couldn’t move with the times.