Curious Friesian calves gather around Kelly O’Rourke as she shows off a vibrant green dress that pops for the camera amid the changing colours of an autumnal palette in the tranquil Leitrim landscape. They look on approvingly, perhaps wondering if there is a reward bucket to come for their modelling moves, when the up-and-coming designer smiles broadly in their direction.

Kelly is a statuesque and elegant model for her second womenswear collection. Lauched this week on kellyorourke.co, the collection embraces what she terms “graceful femininity”.

As it turns out, it’s not the Leitrim fashionista’s first time to strike a pose. Later, over a cuppa and a slice of her granny’s delicious home-baked apple tart, Kelly reveals she had a stint modelling for Celia Holman Lee while she was studying at Limerick School of Art and Design after being spotted on a night out.

Shy and introverted at the time, she found it very tough to do the catwalk shows. However, Kelly says it was an interesting part-time job and good to do something totally out of her comfort zone. “It was fun, but I preferred being backstage to being centre stage,” she says, in her family home in Drumshangole, close to Carrigallen. “It gave me a different taste of the fashion industry, but I knew design was my true calling.”

Aged just five, Kelly’s first real fashion memory centres around the excitement of seeing inside a local clothing factory.

“My granny worked in a factory and the first time I walked in, I was amazed [by fabrics turned into clothes]. I was intrigued by it all.”

Always creative, she recalls being obsessed with drawing in her youth, admitting that art gave her self-esteem. While she didn’t struggle at school, the designer does have a form of dyslexia, which was an added challenge for her in academic study.

“I ended up going to a secondary school in Ballinamore, where art wasn’t an option,” she says.

The young designer concedes that it was probably a blessing that happened because art would have become her obsession to the detriment of everything else. Instead, it meant she had a “focus on her studies”, getting enough points in her Leaving Cert to study Arts in UCD.

“But art was always there and I worked hard on my portfolio which led me to get into a PLC course in Ballyfermot [Dublin] before being accepted into Limerick School of Art and Design in 2013, where I did my BA in fashion design.

“I always loved the idea of making clothes and simultaneously drawing, art, creativity and using my imagination,” she recalls of her move to pursue her true passion. While it was an “intense course”, it gave her a real flavour of what working in the fashion industry is like. That was later cemented by two internships in Spain and Turkey. Working in Barcelona with Josep Abril for three months convinced her this was where she belonged. She followed this as a graduate interning for six months with Ozlem Suer in Istanbul, where Kelly worked on couture collections, which took her to the fashion mecca of Paris.

“She put me on the mannequin draping garments together. I loved that,” she says of working in the bustling Turkish city. “Some of those garments ended up in Paris in the showrooms and in their resort catwalk shows. That really boosted my confidence; I was like, “Wow, I can do this.”

Leitrim inspiration

When the pandemic hit, Kelly returned home where she finds constant daily inspiration in the rural landscape around her. Her father Kevin is the fourth generation to farm here, and she got great support from him, her mother Yeonette, and younger sisters Megan and Shannon. Buoyed by her experiences abroad, she decided to take a leap of faith and bring forward her dream of opening a fashion business.

While it was a steep learning curve to start a new rural business, she was lucky enough to receive support from Leitrim Enterprise Office, Leitrim Leader, the Morris Consultancy and friends and family who helped her dream become a reality.

In 2023, she launched her first collection and this month marks her second. “I know there are so many women who appreciate quality fabrics and beautifully crafted garments.”

For Kelly, fashion is fun, feminine and playful. Timeless elegance, versatility, comfort and wearability are at the forefront of her designs, and she views femininity as “gentle but fearless” but also “powerful.”

It’s an idea explored further in the 20 outfits that make up her autumn range, drawing on the natural world and Irish goddesses. Her daily walks with her camera provide her with constant ideas to bring into her design workshop.

“I’ve always been inspired by nature. It’s not something new. Nature is graceful in itself, and that’s my brand. All of our Irish goddesses are some form or variation of nature, and there’s a rural connection between the divine feminine and nature.

“I want to bring an essence of that or a sense of that heritage into my clothes while simultaneously making them into something that’s wearable every day.”

A huge amount of time goes into design before Kelly travels to London to source fabrics. Drawn to natural materials, unsurprisingly linens, wool, cotton and silks are all to the fore.

The colour palette, she says, is inspired by a “nice sky, the deep dark green forests and then specks of colour” with a “little bit of drama” that comes with autumn.

While Kelly believes it is not realistic for the fashion industry to ever be fully sustainable, she is behind the idea of consuming less and better, reducing waste and reusing where possible, like she does making accessories from offcuts.

“I want to design and make something that is special, has value, is beautiful and will last and you’ll wear because you love it,” she stresses, rather than something that’s discardable. She keeps her prices as accessible and affordable as possible for handmade items. “I think it’s encouraging people to consume less and wear more of what they love. Love your pieces; wear them over and over again. Really enjoy them, mix and match and be creative.”

So committed is she to building her “passion project” into a successful business that she is funding the venture by working the weekend shift at Abbott Nutrition in Cootehill, and working on her brand during the week.

While this sounds full-on, Kelly is clear that her love and passion for what she is doing keeps her going. “It’s such a thrill to see someone wearing and enjoying my clothes and feeling confident, beautiful and feminine – that’s why I do it,” she says, smiling.

While her ultimate ambition would be to have her own premises and for her label to be stocked in places like BT and Arnotts, for now, Kelly is focused on growing her label from rural Leitrim.

Luckily, she doesn’t have to look far for inspiration on how to turn a passion into a successful career from the local countryside.

Her uncle and godfather, Seamus O’Rourke, the best-selling writer and actor, has blazed a trail in this regard that she hopes to follow. “He’s someone I look up to because he’s following his dream, and it took him a long time to build his career. It’s lovely seeing someone who gets to do what they are passionate about.”

See kellyorourke.co