Orla Kiely

Orla Kiely, OBE (born 24 May 1962) is an Irish fashion designer based in London. She began her career designing hats, and moved on to design work on handbags and a variety of other items including kitchenware and cars. She received a master's degree from the Royal College of Art. She worked with several companies before setting up her own business.

Kiely Rowan PLC, the retail and wholesale entity operating the fashion business under Kiely's name, ceased trading on 17 September 2018 but has continued selling through its distribution partners.

Biography

Kiely credits her grandmother with being the creative influence in her life. Her father was an accountant; her mother studied science before being forced to give up work by her employers after she married.

Kiely was educated at Loreto College, Foxrock. She moved to England to work for Esprit while studying for a master's degree at the Royal College of Art in London, primarily in knitwear. In the late 1990s, she had the idea to laminate cloth for handbags: "At the time, no one was doing anything like it. Laminated fabric, in those days, meant tablecloths."

She has been awarded the title of Visiting Professor of Textiles at the Royal College of Art and was made a Senior Fellow in 2016. Her designs have been used for a variety of objects, including kitchenware, stationery, furniture, and Pure Evoke Mio radios.

She has also designed a refillable water bottle called the "Wottle", which is a collaboration with the water filter company Brita. The bottle features her green-stem design and is made from high-density polyethylene, a recyclable plastic material, and produced by a company in Suffolk.

Her business operates out of a studio in Pimlico, London.

She has completed two publications entitled Home and Pattern, both published by Conran Octopus. She released a third publication, A Life in Pattern, in early 2018 to coincide with her exhibition at the Fashion and Textile Museum in May.

Personal life Kiely is married to Dermott Rowan; they have two sons. Kiely's stamp was an 82c stamp bearing 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 worn by Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge, and celebrities including Kirsten Dunst and Alexa Chung.