Interview: Orla Kiely - Leaf force

Published on Monday 10 August 2009 19:13

IT'S EASY to spot Orla Kiely in the lobby of Edinburgh's Caledonian Hilton. Hordes of American tourist are filing through, clutching festival programmes and wearing utility trousers and mirrored wrap-around shades. Amid this sea of fashion "don'ts", Kiely is a beacon of style.

Chic but understated and quietly fashionable, the Irish-born designer seems to epitomise her own brand, one that eschews high-fashion in favour of classic, quirky design. Bare-faced but for a smudge of coral lipstick, and dressed in a slouchy blazer with the sleeves rolled up, she is visiting Edinburgh to launch a handbag that she has designed to raise money for Maggie's Cancer Caring Centres.

Like many high-profile fashion designers, Kiely is regularly approached by charities looking for her help, and obliges whenever she can. This particular cause, however, was close to her heart. She received a call from Scottish broadcaster and Maggie's patron Kirsty Wark, asking if she would design a product to raise money for the charity. Having lost a friend, Annette, to cancer this past April, Kiely jumped at the chance to help out.

"Orla Kiely typifies that approach to colour and joyous design that's very much in line with the Maggie's ethos," says Wark. "She understands the power of colour, its ability to lift spirits, so it made sense to ask her to get involved. I had never met her in my life, but I'm a big fan, so I just picked up the phone, and she said yes immediately."

The finished product is a limited-edition, olive-green shoulder bag and matching purse, featuring flashes of white and coral. Unmistakably Orla Kiely, with its classic shape and firm nod to 1960s prints, it puts a new twist on the designer's recognisable leaf-print.

"After she died, all Annette's friends were reminiscing about how, when she was younger, everyone said she was like a butterfly," says Kiely, pushing a pair of tortoiseshell specs on top of her head. "I wanted to do something a bit different for this project, but I still wanted to use our stem print, because it's well-known. So I started to layer two more leaves on top of it, and before I knew it looked like a butterfly, and now we call it the butterfly stem, for Annette. I think that she would have loved it."

Officially launched in Edinburgh on Friday, the bag went on sale on 3 August, with 100 flying off the shelves within the first 15 minutes, and all the profits going to Maggie's. But then, Kiely's designs have a very loyal following and she's no stranger to success. A graduate of the Royal College of Art in London, she has worked in fashion for more than 20 years and now boasts shops in Tokyo and the US, as well as the UK. You'll find her bold, cheery prints to everything from accessories and clothing to stationery and homeware, and she is now a visiting professor at the RCA.

For all this huge success, Kiely comes across as quiet, measured and extremely modest. Not so her husband and business partner, Dermott, whom she has known since she was 17 and who handles the financial side of the business. Equally stylish, and wearing the requisite glasses with black plastic frames, he accompanies his wife on our interview (the couple are squeezing the launch into a British holiday with their two children) and fills me in where Orla is too modest to wax lyrical about her own talents.

"She's a creative genius," he says matter-of-factly. "An Orla comes around every 20 years. She's brilliant at what she does… I think the Orla Kiely brand is going to be huge. I'm certain that it's going to be one of the most significant brands in the UK."

Kiely smiles bashfully while her husband praises her to the skies. She laughs dismissively when he suggests that in 20 years "I would hope that (the business] would be doing 180 million-200 million a year". Generally speaking, she's happy to leave the financial side of the business to him and get on with focusing on design.

"We kind of appeal to creative people, not necessarily fashionistas," she says. "Kind of architects and graphic designers."

"Intelligent people," adds Dermott.

"People who are creative, who like colour and design," she continues, "and there's a practical side too. For this project, we wanted it to be a bag you'd really want to use and we wanted to do something special. It was very important to us that the proceeds did all go to charity. And with Maggie's it's lovely to focus on something that's very creative, visual and supportive. The environment, the space, the architecture. That makes you feel good, doesn't it, when you're in a beautiful place?"

Certainly, Kiely's eye for beautiful design has made her something of a fashion power player. Her prints are exquisite, her use of colour clever yet restrained, and her designs have a real sense of democracy about them. They're relatively affordable and seem to appeal to a broad range of people, regardless of age or gender. Despite the recession, her sales are up 17 per cent compared with this time last year and, as Dermott informs me with a smile: "Our bedlinen outsells somebody called Calvin Klein…" There's a cheery optimism about Kiely's prints, an honesty that has a broad appeal. They're warm, homely, nostalgic, but simultaneously slick and design-conscious. She believes firmly in good design that's accessible.

And if she can do her bit for a good cause in the process, so much the better.

&#149 The Maggie's Butterfly Stem Print Maxi sling bag costs 110, of which 50 per cent after tax goes to Maggie's. The Orla Kiely sample sale of bags and accessories finishes today at the Playfair Library in Edinburgh. Visit www.orlakiely.com for details.