Not even the Duchess could keep Queen of Prints Orla Kiely going

Global designer Orla Kiely this week closed her retail and wholesale businesses. So what went wrong for arguably the most successful Irish designer of all time, asks Joyce Fegan.

AN OBE before her name, a hat in Sex and the City, movie stars and even royalty as loyal customers, millions of pounds in sales, a darling of Vogue magazine, her logo on an Irish stamp and a collaboration with Citroën, all this, and Orla Kiely has still closed her retail and wholesale businesses.

The news this week, that her parent company Kiely Rowan Plc has ceased trading, comes as a retrospective exhibition of Orla Kiely’s designs takes centre stage at the prestigious Fashion and Textile Museum in London. In what some would see as a pinnacle of success, with the exhibition giving the museum its fastest-selling tickets of all time in terms of advance sales, the news took many by surprise.