When quizzed about top Irish designers, most people recall names such as John Rocha or Lainey Keogh, Paul Costelloe or Louise Kennedy. However, there is another name on the international fashion scene that couldn't be more Irish - or right now, more trendy: Orla Kiely. From it girls, both at home and abroad, to slick fashion disciples and the trendiest of young matrons, it seems the only bag to be seen with is one that bears a small Orla Kiely label.
"I do get a buzz when I see people with my bags," she laughs. "It's nice to see them on the streets of London because it is a fairly big place. And I just came back from Japan and bought all the magazines in the airport - the bags are even in Japanese magazines."
Kiely, who is currently based in London, was in Japan for the Celtic Festival, an extensive exhibition of music, art and design, which takes place in Tokyo each year. Entry is by invitation only and most designers see it as a vital step towards cracking the important Japanese market. Unusually though, Orla was more satisfied about meeting the other Irish designers than scoring that marketing deal.
"It was great to meet Mary Gregory and Cuan Hanley and people like that, because we are based in London. We're already pretty much established in Japan."
More than 40 stores across Japan stock Orla Kiely bags, meaning she can happily lay claim to the title "Big In Japan", and expanding markets in Britain, Ireland and now the US mean that increasingly Kiely is big in other areas too. Not bad for someone who started creating bags under her own label only four years ago.
Now in her early 30s, Orla was born in Shankill in south Co Dublin, the daughter of scientist Maeve Kiely and publican Bob Kiely (the man behind that Donnybrook institution, Kiely's). After studying print and textiles in NCAD, she landed a short stint working with designer Paul Costelloe, most notably helping with the design of the post-office uniforms in 1985, before heading to Germany to work as a print designer with Esprit.
On her return she did a masters degree in textiles in the Royal College of Art in London and concentrated on children's accessories in her final-year show. Harrods immediately swooped and placed an order for her dinky children's hats and bags. Regardless, Keily and her husband Dermot Rowan, who works as her business partner, decided to up stakes and head for Canada.
Although both were working for the design range Club Monaco in Canada, Dermot was still working on the orders for Keily's accessories and setting up contacts in Britain and Japan. These started flooding in when she decided to make little soft-felt backpacks in basic colours such as grey and navy to match some of the hats she already made. These went down extremely well with Keily's friends and family - and with the Japanese buyers.
"The Japanese are great. If they see something they like in key stores, they'll come to you."
After a year in Canada, the pair had decided to move back to England. "It was so cold, and I was pregnant. Both grandparents are in Ireland and we thought that London was as close as we were going to get." That was in 1994 and both the business and Keily's family have grown ever since - Robert is now three and a half and Hamish is one and a half.
Keily worked part-time as a designer with Marks & Spencer and continued to design bags which were increasingly "constructed". There were the fuzzy grey moulded backpacks, the glossy sprig-print mini-totes and magical handbags that had small leaves encrusted on glossy coloured leather. The latter went down particularly well - this writer drooled over one in Brown Thomas so long it went out of stock - and they appeared in practically every glossy magazine here and in England.
"You see something get really big and then you just have to stop and do something different. Luckily, the same thing seems to be happening with the sheepskin bags this autumn/winter. We've never done volume like that before. I was on to our PR company and they were telling me that everyone's gone Orla-mad at the moment. She can't keep the bags in the office."
These sheepskin bags are the ultimate accessories of the moment. Constructed with strips of woolly sheepskin, sometimes black, sometimes bright pink or fawn, they are reversible and the perfect size for a Filofax, a mobile phone and a MAC make-up bag - the current accessories of choice. As for Keily, her can't-do-without accessories are quite as likely to be nappies and school bags at the moment.
With two children under the age of four, it's difficult to see where she gets the time to design a coin purse, let alone go on buying trips to Italy and marketing trips to Japan. "To be honest, I think people who stay at home with their children have it much harder. I just couldn't do it. I now work entirely for myself so I can work my own hours and I have this space."
She is equally sanguine about working so closely with her husband, Dermot. "We both do such different things - it's not as if we're both designers. He does all the parts of the business I couldn't even imagine; all the invoices and dealing with the factories and the orders."
The next big thing for Orla is the growing US market - her bags are already being stocked by Saks and Henry Bendels, and Bergdorf Goodman has been calling recently. More immediately, they have expanded into small leather goods, such as wallets and notebooks, that will probably arrive in Ireland next winter, but no further expansion into clothing is planned as yet. "It's something we do talk about though," she says.
While they are happily settled in London right now, Keily's thoughts turn to Ireland quite frequently. "I often think I'd like to come back - I think all Irish people think of returning at times. I do sometimes think that I'd like the boys to go to secondary school in Ireland, but really, London's been good to us."