Orla Kiely

Orla Kiely 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.

Biography

Orla 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 qualified as a textile designer at the National College of Art and Design in Dublin and moved to New York to work for a wallpaper and fabric designer. She moved to England to work for Esprit while studying for a Master's at the Royal College of Art in London, primarily in knitwear. In her exit show at the RCA, she displayed a range of hats which were purchased by Harrods. She did design work for Marks & Spencer and Habitat.

She began designing handbags after her father noted during her first London Fashion Week that everyone was carrying a handbag, but no one was wearing a hat. 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."