Orla Kiely: the pattern that permeated a generation

Designer Orla Kiely’s Stem pattern may be one of the most recognised motifs of 21st-century fashion, however today the Irish designer announced that her eponymous brand would cease trading.

The company, which Kiely, 55, started as a kitchen tabletop enterprise with her husband Rowan in 1995, employed more than 70 staff and had 1,000 stockists globally selling the brand's ready-to-wear, homeware, furnishings, luggage and accessories, all emblazoned with her instantly recognisable '70s-inspired graphics.

The Company’s latest filed accounts suggest that turnover had in fact risen 15.3 per cent to £8.3m in the year to March 2017. Despite this the directors concluded this morning that the business should enter voluntary liquidation following various challenges that have faced the company over the past few years, both in the UK and abroad. Today it has shut the doors on all of its retail stores: two in London (Seven Dials and Kings Road), one in Kildare in Ireland, one in New York and five in Korea. Employees were sent home without warning, and are reportedly having to file for redundancy.

It seems the decline of the Orla Kiely brand was as rapid as its rise.

London-based, Dublin-born Kiely’s first job upon graduating with a textile design BA from the National College of Art and Design in Dublin was with a wallpaper and fabric designer in New York. She later moved back into the fashion industry, working as a pattern designer for Esprit, while completing an MA in knitwear at the Royal College of Art in London. For her RCA graduate show Kiely produced a range of hats which was snapped up by Harrods.

Following a word of advice from her father - that every woman carries a handbag, but very few a hat - Kiely soon switched from hats to bags, initially running her company as a side business, while consulting for brands like Marks and Spencer and Habitat during the week.

In the late 1990s, she had a lightbulb moment: the idea to craft handbags from laminated cloth. "At the time, no one was doing anything like it,” she told the Independent in 2010. “Laminated fabric, in those days, meant tablecloths.”

The laminated bags became a signature product but it was Kiely’s stylized graphic patterns which really gave the brand its identity. The trademark ‘Stem’ graphic she created in the 1990s became the company logo and evolved to feature on everything from mugs and dresses to notebooks and even cars.

The prints and patterns also made their way onto womenswear, with the Orla Kiely clothing line popular with everyone from Alexa Chung to Kirsten Dunst, but particularly loved by the royals.

Kate Middleton has been seen wearing the label's dresses on several occasions, for example in February this year when she wore a floral outfit to London's National Portrait Gallery. When she wore Orla's bird-print dress back in 2012, it triggered a near meltdown on the brand's website.

Pippa Middleton is also a fan of the brand, wearing a Kiely cardigan when she watched tennis at Wimbledon with her brother, while Carole Middleton wore a blue printed Orla Kiely dress when she went to visit the newborn Prince George in 2013.

Fifteen years ago Kiely began designing for the home, starting with a range of mugs and a furniture collaboration with Heal’s, adding wallpaper, soft furnishings, linen, bedding, crockery and gardening accessories to the range. The design-led but affordable homewares soon counted for half of the brand’s sales, and, as of the end of 2017, they had sold more than a million stem-printed enamel plant pots.

From a sideline accessories business that she developed in her spare time, Orla Kiely and her husband built a global lifestyle empire in just two decades. Along the way, Orla earned the title 'Queen of Prints' and in 2011 was awarded an OBE in recognition of her services to business and the fashion industry in the UK.

The brand, which will continue to sell some of its Orla Kiely Home and Design branded products through partners, said: "Thank you for embracing our brand and designs throughout the years and for your ongoing support."

Orla Kiely is the latest victim of a challenging retail landscape. House of Fraser, Marks & Spencer and New Look have all been forced to shut stores this year, as e-commerce continues to boom.

In a strange twist of events, Orla Kiely is currently the subject of a major exhibition at the Fashion and Textile Museum in London.

The exhibition, entitled Orla Kiely: A Life in Pattern, features more than 150 patterns and products spanning her work from the 1990s until today, as well as collaborations with photographers, film directors and architects.

The exhibition is on until 23 September.