LONDON-BASED Irish fashion designer Orla Kiely returned to her native Dublin yesterday to launch her new range of bags and accessories in aid of Fashion Targets Breast Cancer.
In leather and laminated cotton, the collection's distinctive new print incorporates the target motif of the charity in an abstract flower design.
"I wanted it to be colourful and in a subtle way uplifting," the designer said. All proceeds will go to Action Breast Cancer and Europa Donna Ireland.
The launch was attended by three Dublin women - Elaine McKenna, Debbie Mooney and Grainne Melly - who have all successfully fought the disease.
"We were an open door when it came to this charity", said Dermott Rowan, Ms Kiely's husband and business partner.
"Orla's mentor and inspiration was her tutor Kay Cosserat, her professor at the Royal College of Art, who really encouraged her talent and who died five years ago from a cancerous tumour so big it broke her sternum. It was the first time we really became really aware of the disease."
Two of the couple's friends in London have had recent successful battles against cancer and another is currently fighting the disease.
"People should be getting tested and having mammograms, it is so important," Ms Kiely stressed. Kiely is Ireland's most successful international designer whose work is sold throughout the world.
Her company, which employs 40 people, won top prize at the UK Fashion Exports Awards in June, an acknowledgment of the trebling of its export sales in the last five years.
Ms Kiely is to open a store in New York in the new year coinciding with the launch of a homewares collection in the US.
Plans to open a shop in Dublin are on hold because of the economic climate, says Mr Rowan, and no decision will be made until next February.
The new bag range, which starts at €85, is being sold exclusively through Brown Thomas stores in Ireland.
