Kiely in vogue

FASHIONShe describes her style as clean and simple but Orla Kiely's business sales top ¤120 million and her signature prints can be seen on everything from clothes to cars. Not bad for a woman who started out working on uniforms for the post office

‘PEOPLE THINK I am Mrs Multicolour, but I’m not,” smiles Orla Kiely. “When I do colour, it is in tones of other colours and there will often be a neutral of some sort to soften them.”

It’s a bright sunny day in London and we are in Orla Kiely’s Covent Garden shop where her buoyant, signature patterns decorate not just bags and clothes, but furniture, ceramics, wallpaper, towels and bedlinen. Even the pale wooden floorboards bear her famous leaf print, cut into the grain using a high-speed water jet. “I’d prefer darker wood with a light pattern,” she muses as we peer through the window. “I like brown. I like dark wood.” Kiely is definite about her choices. “She’s like an air-traffic controller when she arrives in the design studio,” says her personal assistant, Eoin Cooney. “It’s change that. Do that. She always has the last word.”

Downstairs, an American tourist is trying on a pebble print dress from the summer collection while the woman’s young daughter flops down on to an orange leather armchair and exclaims: “I love this shop. It’s awesome.” Upstairs, a couple with a buggy are selecting wallpaper while others drift in and out. TV presenter Alexa Chung has just been in buying the “drifting boat” navy print silk dress from the summer collection, which is being sported by the shop’s pretty Italian manager, Nicoletta. It’s a busy street and the shop faces two smart hotels – the Covent Garden and the Mountbatten – both of which regularly discharge high-profile guests such as Susan Sarandon, John Malkovich or Scarlett Johansson.

This is a big year for Kiely and her husband and business partner Dermott Rowan. She has just launched her first fragrance in collaboration with fragrance house IFF. In August, her new boutique devoted to her fashion and fragrance is due to open on the Kings Road in Chelsea. In September, in a first for an Irish fashion designer, her limited edition Orla Kiely Citroën DS3 – the car described by Jeremy Clarkson as motoring's equivalent of the iPod – will be unveiled at London Fashion Week. That same month, her 30,000-word magnum opus, called Pattern, will be published by Conran Octopus. There's a kitchenware range due in September and a short movie is in production.

It’s a far cry from the days when Kiely worked on post-office uniforms in Dublin with Paul Costelloe after graduating from NCAD in fashion and textiles. Later, she spent four years as a pattern designer with Esprit in London, then completed an MA in knit at the Royal College of Art. A job in Canada followed and Rowan, her teenage sweetheart, went with her. It was there that the pair started a little business making bags as a sideline.

“Email didn’t exist then and everything was by fax. We would get orders in the middle of the night on the dining-room table,” she recalls. Back in London, she freelanced for Marks and Spencer doing children’s wear, but when she was offered the opportunity to create a designer range for Debenhams, she jumped at the chance. She got a day to leave the MS building. “That’s the way it was,” she says.

That opportunity gave the couple, who by then were married with two small children, the financial strength to start up on their own. From a handful of accessories and bags decorated with her now familiar trademark patterns, the Orla Kiely brand has grown in the past 15 years to the point where annual sales top €120 million and there seem no boundaries to its popularity and widespread application. “We have 15 years of prints that we own that can translate,” says Rowan. “And those prints are registered worldwide.” Bedlinen has been particularly successful with more than €7 million worth of sheets sold. “Marimekko (in Finland) are the only others doing big-scale prints,” adds Kiely.

Kiely's accessible retro-pattern language has roots in the 1950s and 1960s. "That mid-century period, all that modernity, is part of my creative background," she says. "It was a time when things started to change. I love the simplicity and functionality of Danish and Finnish designers like Alvar Aalto and Arne Jacobsen and I have always liked clean, graphic images. I remember we had a green Formica kitchen at home with an orange ceiling and growing up I loved all that. My inspiration has clearly come from Ireland – after all I lived there until I left college." She mentions the 1960s movie Les Demoiselles de Rochfortwith Catherine Deneuve as a particular influence for her current spring/summer collection.

Her sense of colour has always been fresh and individual and shows in her personal style – today, she is wearing an emerald green silk dress, bright red lipstick, a striped cardigan and brown wedge shoes.

“My designs may look clean and simple but the balance is very important. It’s hard to answer how you know a design is going to work because it’s very instinctual when you know you’ve got it. It has enough strength on its own. It is an emotional response looking at something that you love, pattern-wise. I love the idea of a repeat pattern, the idea that it can go on and on and on. I usually start with colour first, then pattern and then start to work in the mood. It is more difficult to design shape without the pattern first.”

Her winter fashion collection in warm autumnal colours – shot by the stylist and photographer Venetia Scott – allows her patterns to be centre or offstage in tent or tunic shapes, with darker shades offset by bright checks or graphic stripes.

The appealing hooded raincoats stand out. Their stylised flower prints in various colour tones are repeated in matching bags. It’s her typical mix of unfussy shapes with bold details. Kiely doesn’t do catwalk shows, preferring an alternative presentation that is less stressful. “We are ourselves and not trying to be anything else. There’s a lot of pressure when you go down that show road thing and I’m happy about the way we manage it.”

A hard worker, Kiely admits that she never switches off and is keen every season to move forward. “I think it is about being honest about what you like and following my aesthetic as much as I can without worrying about whether people like it or not.”

Kiely’s head office is a modern, light-filled building in Clapham that houses an 11-strong youthful design team on one floor, and Rowan’s dedicated managerial and sales staff on another. Home is a Victorian house nearby that is currently being renovated to allow for her growing teenage boys, Robert and Hamish, and their labradoodle, Olivia. She keeps close to her family in Dublin and parents Bob and Mary Kiely.

Kiely and Rowan are an entertaining double act and clearly a dynamic partnership. That enviable relationship has been central to their success. Rowan is known for his adulation of her talent and does the financial talking. But she is equally quick to acknowledge his role in their expansion. “He has built up a style business and has done it in his own way. Dermott is good in a crisis and is very passionate about what we do.” He is also now in demand worldwide for his expertise, and was recently in Dublin advising Bord Bia on brand development and in Rio de Janeiro for Ernst Young, speaking on a similar topic.

“We are building the brand slowly,” she says. “In the end, you don’t let people down. We are quite resourceful. We have a long way to go, we’re not done yet. It is still enjoyable and even though it gets a bit manic, I am down there in the thick of it.”

Rowan attributes the Orla Kiely appeal to other factors as well. “Basically it is about happiness,” he says. “When you put colour in, you create happiness. The only problem is, very few can do it.”