Thursday, December 31, 2015

Orla Outfits of the Year

Here's all the outfits that I created for this blog in 2015 (in the second row, you can clearly see my obsession with midi skirts). A few of these outfits I actually never wrote full OOOTD posts for because I just never got around to them. See if you can spot them :)

What a fun year it's been blogging about Orla Kiely! So many exciting things happened for fans this year, which started with the debut of Orla Kiely's baby line for Target. A few months after that, Orla Kiely released her first ever stroller with Maclaren (at this point, I felt like these were all signs that I should have another baby. My friends and family know that it has been my DREAM to have a baby girl one day, and if I ever do, you better believe that she will have this stroller).

In addition to Orla Kiely's baby line, she also continued to release travel bags and accessories at Target, much to the delight of fans. And collectors were BEYOND excited when she created a line of bedding, pillows, and curtains for Target (so now your entire home can be covered in her patterns J).  But probably my favorite release this year was her collection of gorgeous watches, aptly named Orla Kiey Time.

There were also a few surprising places that began to sell Orla Kiely, including UltaKohls, and even British Airways (I'm actually traveling to Europe this year and hope to get this bag if it's still available!) And of course, let's not forget Burlington, where I was able to get my biggest Orla Kiely haul ever!

Leith Clark, style director for Harper's Bazaar, helped create L'Orla, a capsule resort collection filled with beautiful retro pieces. And this year, we were able to see presentations for both the AW15 and SS16 collections. Orla Kiely's collaboration with Clarks was just as cute as ever, but I guess all good things must come to an end as the Fall/Winter line was her last for the shoe brand. But there were still other amazing collaborations including her stationery line with Studio Oh! and of course the retro trash bins with Brabantia. Orla Kiely also worked with a couple charities to create beautiful pieces of art that were auctioned off. 

It was also so much fun connecting with so many lovely Orla Kiely fans from around the world through Instagram. Above, you will see my top nine posts of 2015. Thank you ladies for all the tips and for sharing my love of all things Orla Kiely :)

This year, I set a goal for myself to blog at least once a day. That ended up proving to be quite challenging, so I altered my goal to at least have one blog post for every day of the year. So here we are on New Year's Eve and this is my 365th post! I made it and I am SO happy that I was able to accomplish what I set out to do! I now have some new goals for this blog going into 2016, which include writing OOOTDs and Thursday Purseday posts more consistently and starting a We Love Orla Kiely: Buying/Selling/Trading community here on this blog. I fear these might be slightly overly ambitious goals for me considering I do work full time as a high school math teacher and when I'm not doing that, I'm spending time with my husband and my three-year-old son who is becoming more and more of a handful each day. But this blog is my favorite hobby and I will do my best to post as consistently as possible and come up with new ways to connect even more with all the Orla Kiely lovers out there :) Here's to an exciting 2016, and I wish everyone a HAPPY new year!

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

What a lovely synopsis of 2015! I, too, am an ardent fan of Orla Kiely, although my collection is paltry compared to yours. However, I love reading your blogs -- you are always so thorough in your reviews and your attention to detail is astonishing. How you do it all is simply amazing (wife, mother, math teacher)! I look forward to another year of Orla Kiely updates and posts. Thank you! jaycee

Anonymous said...

Thanks for all your work on this blog. It helped me secure four of the Orla Kiely throws on my visit to Burlington in Las Vegas (abacus autumn, giant stem in blue, apricot AND elephant) to add to the tiny stem in elephant from TK Maxx at home in the UK. Happy New Year!

iloveorlakiely said...

Thank you so much for your comment - you have no idea how much it means to me to hear your kind words :) I'm always happy to share my love of Orla Kiely with other fans out there!

iloveorlakiely said...

That's wonderful! I'm so happy you were able to score all of those Orla Kiely throws (I've not seen the Elephant colorway yet, so glad you were able to find one!) Hope you're having a Happy New Year as well :)