Orla Kiely (Q8832)
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Orla Kiely is a fashion house from FMD.
| Language | Label | Description | Also known as |
|---|---|---|---|
| English | Orla Kiely |
Orla Kiely is a fashion house from FMD. |
Statements
The women who inspired this collection ranged from the boldly radical to the inherently conservative. To brainstorm, Leith Clark went to the “Queer British Art 1861–1967” exhibition at Tate Britain, and was thus compelled to add some style pointers from Virginia Woolf and Vanessa Bell. She also watchedThe Royals, and hence became gripped by the early style of Princess Margaret and HRH Queen Elizabeth herself. These two tranches of muse—Bloomsbury and Balmoral—were layered onto L’Orla’s ’60s/’70s base-layer, epitomized for Clark by Penelope Tree. The results conjured Woolf’s gender-transcending time traveler Orlando: You could see the individual fossils of inspiration in the whole, while easily imagining these looks being worn at any time between 1920 and, say, 2050.Chalk-drawn printed pale green velvet; charm-print crepe; appealing boucle; richly dotted devore velvet; and bobbled cashmere with grids of little flowers were used to make Bloomsbury-louche ruffled dresses with prim bibs and collars; proper-but-loose tweed suits; and coordinated skirt-and-sweater combinations. Neither entirely radical nor conservative in itself, this was a collection whose unifying theme was of prettiness plucked from the past and proposed afresh for now.
13 June 2018
Next year, from May to September, Orla Kiely will be the subject of an exhibition at the Fashion and Textile Museum in London entitled A Life In Pattern. As a conjuror of prints that defied the minimalist modernist 90s to offer a far braver, busier, and more nostalgic alternative, she first hit the big time with Stem, the endlessly versatile upward-facing leaf design that is incorporated into her logo. From bags to bedsheets—and eventually ready-to-wear—it all stemmed from Stem.After confessing that she is still to look through her files and find “the first scribble” of what was an almost offhandedly executed eureka moment, Kiely showed a clothing collection which—appropriately enough—followed a pattern.This designer’s territory is in the dissonance and affinity that connects generations, so here again, she zeroed in on the past (the ’70s looks inspired by ’40s glamour) to speak to the present. Its catalyst was a collection of images of The Pointer Sisters (so underrated) in their early, tea-dress and marabou stage. Forgivingly-weighted viscose and silk crepe dresses, shorts, and jumpsuits came printed in vaguely Japanese-grid underlaid floral patterns and another big-blooming floral Kiely entitled Acapulco. Sometimes the prints were mixed and, nearly always, there were clusters of gather and small fringes of ruffle at hem, bib, mini-peplum, collar, or neckline. There was more ruffle and cutesy color clash on vintage-inspired knitwear and Hessian raffia bags lined in leather and embroidered with bugs. Kiely’s professional pattern—to gently evoke a then that seems alluringly fresh in the now—continues to serve her well.
15 September 2017
Orla Kiely said this collection blossomed forth from a vision of an Upper East Side utopia as seen in the pages of Diana Vreeland’s vintageVogue—with just a twist of the Parisian as depicted inThe Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie. These two irreproachable inspirations played solidly to Kiely’s core calling of forgiving-to-wear, flourish-loaded, print-packed prettiness. Two chiffon dresses with pleated high-waist skirt sections and narrow ruffle-edged V necklines set in accordion-line bibs came in a Mystery Machine deconstructed paisley floral in a boldly back-in-time combination of browns and pink, or teal, purple, and olive. Chunky Irish tweed in purple-and-blue patterned mustard/beige check was utilized in a dashing little bomber and skirt combination; belted roomy coats; uptown fake-fur detachable collars and cuffs; and metal-lined enamel squarish oversize buttons. A ruffle-hemmed pinafore dress in purple was matched on the rail with a bronze ruffle-collared Lurex top. A fantastic dress in velvet, crushed to distort its brown, shone and shifted in the light like caramel bubbling madly in a pan. Elsewhere, deep-pile velvets, unusually soft and lustrous to the touch, were used in skirts, and a pink bib was used on a violet and inevitably ruffle-cuffed sweater. Sweet, never unknowingly under-scalloped, and with just an intriguing hint of sickliness too, this was a fine Kiely mashed-up flashback of a collection.
17 February 2017
Fresh from her first retail foray into the U.S.—a store on Bleecker Street in Manhattan opened in October and is reportedly performing strongly—Orla Kielyhas delivered a quintessentially Kiely-esque Pre-Fall collection with which to stock it. Its personification of mood was the hair-swept-back, arched-eyebrowed, Gallic-swan delicacy of Truffaut-shot Claude Jade. Its trio of single-scale prints was inspired by the weathered tiles Kiely was taken with on a September trip to Porto, Portugal. Put through Kiely’s creative blender, the result was a restrainedly frilly collection filled with pretty interplays of pattern and patina.A trapeze dress featured a body of mustard cotton ottoman, whose ridged texture contrasted against the sheeny lightness of its silken arms and frilled collar, tricking the eye to intuit two layers rather than one garment. A fitted 3-D silk jacquard of bronze gold on off-black came with a detachable organza collar. The inverse box pleat at the back of Kiely’s cutesy olive and navy mid-length raincoats made for a satisfyingly swoopy outerwear accent. Knitwear included sweaters with blown-up tile-motif detailing and a cute cardigan with chunky tortoiseshell buttons sewn against a hot pink placket. A short-sleeved dress in that ottoman was kookified via a throat-to-navel beam of haphazardly ruffled ribbon and an irregularly pleated hem panel whose ridging ran against that of the section above it. Kiely’s kaleidoscopically articulated, late-’60s, edge-of-’70s aesthetic was finely expressed here.
7 December 2016
Think of ’60s style icons andTwiggy,Anita Pallenberg, andJean Shrimptonprobably come to mind. You can bet those women have inspired Orla Kiely at some point along the way, but her muse for Spring ’17 was the lesser-known Mimi Fariña, the multi-hyphenate singer, songwriter, model, and activist. Fariña defined the free spirit of the ’60s and ’70s—she lived in a cabin in the California woods; performed at Big Sur folk festivals with her sister, Joan Baez; and was once arrested at a peaceful protest. So Kiely whipped up the prairie dresses, floral wide-leg trousers, and boyish button-downs that Fariña might have worn back in the day, all with her usual dose of charm.A few simple poplin shirtdresses with sunflower embroidery were sweet standouts, while a ditzy floral shift dress in shades of burgundy, green, and blush was layered over a black-and-white daisy blouse to dizzying—but groovy!—effect. Kiely has a way of making the busiest prints look crisp and clean—never fussy or overdone—so even the print-averse might be comfortable slipping into one of her mod frocks. Eclecticism is still trending pretty heavily these days, but Kiely’s take is refreshingly streamlined. By the end of the month, New Yorkers will be able to shop the current collection—which is every bit as colorful and spirited—in her new Bleecker Street store, where the presentation was held today.
9 September 2016
This is the second Resort season manifestation ofOrla Kielyas L’Orla—a capsule co-conceived and designed by Kiely with her mainline stylist of eight-ish years, Leith Clark. The Irish high priestess of print agreed that this semi-alternate identity frees her to flex aesthetic muscles her eponymous label doesn’t exercise. “Its definitely more feminine, in a way. It’s prettier, more whimsical, than we often are in a brand.” Mainline Kiely is graphic and kind of minimal. L’Orla ramps up both decoration and whoosh, an informed amalgam of Laura Ashley, Celia Birtwell (cited on the notes), and Gunne Sax.Organza dresses in black or white heaped with embroidered floral gables and cuffed with double-strata of scallops, Swiss cotton dresses with ruffled collars or bibs and scalloped hems, slim-cut dungarees with satisfyingly OshKosh-clanky steel buckles at the shoulder in a deep purple paisley cutout velvet jacquard were a few of the so-right-now-yet-retro-too highlights here. Motifs included a bird, a bee—what is it about apiculture and fashion right now?—and most mood-enhancingly of all ditsy scattergun floral. One look, those dungarees in a lovely printed Italian corduroy worn over a ruffle-necked blouse, was double ditsy.Which—and this is a total aside—led to a stupendous etymological hypothesis. According to the OED, the word “ditzy” (alternative spelling, “ditsy”) emerged in the mid 1970s. And its derivation is not established. Surely the source must be this floral, then so ubiquitous whether worn by Sissy Spacek and Shelley Duvall inThree Womenor patterned on the Ingalls’s girls smock dresses inLittle House on the Prairie(both key influences cited by Kiely and Clark here). Or did the egg predate chicken? Either way, how the ’70s reimagined rustic Victorian/Edwardian is widely being reimagined afresh—here it was done with aplom.
8 June 2016
In the late 1950s and early 1960s in Britain a new kind of drama emerged on stage and screen that confronted the grittier realities of modern life. Frequently set in the north of England, so-called “kitchen sink dramas” such asA Kind of Loving(1962) explored teenage angst and ambition, often punching above their weight in terms of scope and influence. It’s against this backdrop of steely realism thatOrla Kielyset her Fall 2016 collection, albeit with an insouciant dash of glamour: “I love the industrial feel of that part of the country and all its vast outdoor spaces,” she said, while wearing a dress of her own design over a turtleneck with her trademark glasses. “Just imagine Anna Karenina but in Huddersfield.” That West Yorkshire town, and its surrounding moorlands, gives rise here to some deliciously rugged textures: Tweed and shearling and mohair were piled together in heather, fern, and slate tones all thoroughly evocative of the landscape.You get the sense, though, that Kiely’s ingenue has swapped the shackles of domesticity for the bright lights of the dance hall. That youthful staple, the bomber jacket, was cleverly reworked in houndstooth with a shearling collar: “It’s very Northern Soul,” said Kiely, referring to the music scene that took hold in the U.K. in the late 1960s and ’70s (see photographer Elaine Constantine’s brilliant feature film debut,Northern Soul, for more). Meanwhile, decidedly soft and non-scratchy Lurex pleat-skirts, dresses, and blousons brought glitz. For night there were wispy organza dresses, in black or blush, whose giant frills wouldn’t be out of place on the red carpet. For day, two-piece suits with double-breasted jackets and little pencil skirts in maxi houndstooth prints were styled with mohair or sparkly berets for a French feel. Notable, too, is the latest addition to Kiely’s line: a series of jewel accessories that ran the gamut from oversize bumblebee brooches to floral pins that riff on the functionality of the key chain. And as the models took a turn in these richly layered looks you could imagine them heading straight out of the showroom and into the wilds of the northern night.
2 March 2016
Sometimes the line between a collection appearing tightly focused (good!) and narrowly unambitious (bad!) is so fine that whatever side you land on feels arbitrary. ThisOrla Kielyoffering danced prettily enough—but often rather dully, too—right down that line.Kiely is a national treasure who has starred on Irish postage stamps along with her blockbuster petal print. However, even for this confirmed fan of the designer’s brand of idealized nostalgia—a less cutesy, more graphic, more womanly mix than Cath Kidston’s outright kitsch—Pre-Fall ’16 felt like a collection resting on 2-D-print laurels.Finely executed cropped Chinese knits with broad ribbing at mid-arm and midriff bore blown-up intarsia reliefs of a flower silhouette that we saw again (and again) on monochrome silk pants, a full-skirted, frill-waisted shirt-skirt, and a gold-buttoned jacket, as well as on more knits. Cotton floral-embroidered dresses and skirts in navy, plus a pleat-bibbed blouse with golden shirt studs were cute and affordable. Maybe it was because the contra-colored florals felt a mite autopilot that the one-colored pieces invited the eye more compellingly: A halter-neck navy school dress and a tiered, gently gathered navy knee-lengther at the end of the line were both strong. Two high-buttoned, double-breasted duffle coats, one cut short and one long, looked sweet enough.
21 December 2015