Laura Ashley (1926 – 1988) British fabric and fashion designer

Advertisements
Laura Ashley featured image
Laura Ashley featured an image

Laura Ashley (1926 – 1988) was a British fashion designer who turned her style into one of the most successful programs in the home market. The traditional country appearance has become a hallmark style that has been frequently imitated in tone and theme. Before her death and subsequent economic losses, she also created a successful business.

Born in Merthyr Tydfil, Laura Ashley was a British fashion and fabric designer. Laura Ashley was one of the first British designers to experiment with lifestyle marketing. Her romantic vision of nineteenth-century rural life, adapted to modern domestic realities, inspired a generation of middle-class Britons who returned to country life in the 1960s and 1970s. The wholesome approach Ashley had to fabric design embodied the old-fashioned ideals of family, home and an unhurried environment where someone always comes to tuck you in at bedtime.

Not only because of her inspired talent but also because of her alliance with her husband, Bernard, which was the remarkable success of the multinational fabric and clothing empire that bore her name.

10 Magazine models for Laura Ashley
10 Magazine models for Laura Ashley

International Business

While the designer Laura Ashley continued to develop her multi-million dollar business with franchises worldwide, the woman Laura Ashley lived as a recluse. She wore her designs and regularly flew with a set of fabrics in her private aircraft with its interior decorated.

She shunned ads. In an interview during the early 1980s, she said, “The idea of four babies, cooking, sewing, and looking after a home has fitted me perfectly.” When asked to describe the inspirations for her designs, she said, “Living remotely as I have done has not been brought up with the city influences, and we have grown in our way. I think the domestic arts are wonderful.”

Advertisements

Beginnings

The company began when Mrs Ashley and her husband set up silk screens to print placemats and scarves on their kitchen table in Pimlico, London, in 1953. As a sideline, she started designing linen tea towels printed with Victorian playbills and posters in 1956.

Victorian ruffled pinafores, old-fashioned smocks, feminine skirts and lace-trimmed nightgowns emphasise their practical point of view of Ashley and their return to the philosophy of nature.

And while the home furnishings series may have come straight from a Victorian farmhouse, in country and city homes, restaurants and offices, the coordinating selection of tiny floral prints, borders and ceramic tiles has found popularity.

1950s

The Ashley’s moved to Surrey in the early 1950s and then to Carno, Wales, the new headquarters of the Laura Ashley operation, in the late 50s. Bernard Ashley was responsible for the company’s engineering and business aspects, while Mrs Ashley continued to design.

In Wales, labour was abundant, and industry flourished. Mrs Ashley found renewed inspiration in the countryside and planned to branch out to fashion aprons and house dresses from household textiles.

In the late 1960s, she entered retailing, opening her first shop in London in 1969. Her uncle, Nick Ashley, took over company management when Ashley died in 1988.

Advertisements

Voluntary Administration

Following the COVID-19 outbreak, Laura Ashley announced that it would file for administration in 2020, putting 2,700 jobs at risk. After struggling for several years, the company blamed its problems on a “significant” drop in trade, with no end in sight to COVID-19.

Gordon Brothers, an investment firm, announced on April 22, 2020, that it had acquired the Laura Ashley brand name, archives, and intellectual property rights out of administration. They announced in October 2020 that they would return with a flagship store in the Westfield Shopping Centre in West London in 2021 and a series of new stores through Next’s 500 UK stores and website.

Bounce back

In 2023, three years since voluntary administration, it is celebrating the 70th anniversary of its founding and preparing to relaunch its fashion arm. Sales of furniture and homewares are bouncing back under new deals with Next, DFS and John Lewis, but they are still about half the level they reached before the collapse.

Shop Laura Ashley

Sources

Butler, S. (2023, January 31). Poppy Marshall-Lawton: bringing Laura Ashley back into fashion. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/jan/31/poppy-marshall-lawton-bringing-laura-ashley-back-into-fashion

Byars, M., & Riley, T. (2004). The design encyclopedia. Laurence King Publishing.

Czerwinski, M. (2009). Fifty dresses that changed the world. Conran Octopus.

Dormer, P. (1999). The illustrated dictionary of twentieth-century designers: the key personalities in design and the applied arts. Greenwich Ed.

The 20 most influential people of the last 20 years. (1999). Home Textiles Today, 4-10. Retrieved from https://ezproxy.csu.edu.au/login?url=https://www-proquest-com.ezproxy.csu.edu.au/trade-journals/20-most-influential-people-last-years/docview/223046569/se-2?accountid=10344

Wikipedia contributors. (2021, May 13). Laura Ashley plc. In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 07:35, May 18, 2021, from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Laura_Ashley_plc&oldid=1022978422

Advertisements

Design Books – Amazon

* This website may contain affiliate links, and I may earn a small commission when you click on links at no additional cost.  As an Amazon and Sovrn affiliate, I earn from qualifying purchases.

More on British Textiles

  • Morton Sundour’s beautiful British furnishing fabrics

    Morton Sundour’s beautiful British furnishing fabrics

    It was founded in 1914, by Alexander Morton who reorganised his Alexander Morton and Company Ltd, with Morton Sundour as “the major off-shoot”. It was run by his second son James Morton.Read More →

  • Robert Yorke Goodden (1909-2002) British Architect Designer

    Robert Yorke Goodden (1909-2002) British Architect Designer

    He was in private practice since 1932. Wallpapers, domestic machine-pressed glassware for Chance Bros., 1953 coronation hangings for Westminster Abbey, gold and silverwares, ceremonial metalwork, glassware for King’s College, Cambridge, 1961 metal-foil murals for the oceanliner Canberra, engraved and sandblasted glass murals for Pilkington. Read More →

  • Shirley Craven (b.1934) British Textile Designer

    Shirley Craven (b.1934) British Textile Designer

    Shirley Craven (b.1934) was a British textile designer. She studied at Kingston upon Hull and the Royal College of Art, London. Craven ‘pioneered an aesthetic more akin to painting than textiles’, breaking ‘all the rules’.Read More →

  • Marvel at the beauty of the Snakeshead pattern by William Morris

    Marvel at the beauty of the Snakeshead pattern by William Morris

    Morris used Indian silks and a red and black colour scheme to create Snakehead, featuring his favourite flower, the fritillary.Read More →

  • Elizabeth Peacock (1880 – 1969) British textile designer

    Elizabeth Peacock (1880 – 1969) British textile designer

    She was best known for the eight banners commissioned by Leonard and Dorothy Elmhirst for the Great Hall in Dartington between 1934 and 1938. She was a spinner, dyer, and weaver and an outstanding teacher from 1940 until 1957.Read More →

  • Enid Crystal Dorothy Marx (1902 – 1998) British textile and graphic designer

    Enid Crystal Dorothy Marx (1902 – 1998) British textile and graphic designer

    Designs for London Underground seats. She studied painting and wood engraving at the Royal College of Art in London, as well as at the Central School of Arts and Crafts.Read More →

  • Alastair J.F. Morton (1910 – 1963) British textile Manufacturer

    Alastair J.F. Morton (1910 – 1963) British textile Manufacturer

    Morton joined his family’s Morton Sundour Fabrics in 1931 and oversaw the company’s first screen-printed fabrics. He was the artistic director and principal designer of Edinburgh Weavers in Carlisle, which was established in 1928 as Morton Sundour’s creative design unit from 1932 to 1935. From the 1930s, he was a supporter of the Modern movement,…

  • Jacqueline Groag (1903 – 1986) Czech textile designer

    Jacqueline Groag (1903 – 1986) Czech textile designer

    Jacqueline Groag (1903 – 1986) was a Czech textile designer and ceramicist. Born in Prague she studied in Vienna at the Kunstgewerbeschule during the 1920s. In 1937 she moved to Paris where she designed dress prints for Jeanne Lanvin, Elsa Schiparelli and others.Read More →

  • Lucienne Day (1917 – 2010), influential  🇬🇧 textile designer

    Lucienne Day (1917 – 2010), influential 🇬🇧 textile designer

    Lucienne Day was one of the most influential post-war British textile designers. She developed a unique style of pattern making. Read More →

  • Minnie Macleish (1876 – 1957 ) British textile designer

    Minnie Macleish (1876 – 1957 ) British textile designer

    She collaborated with Charles Rennie Mackintosh and Constance Irving at London’s Foxton textiles and Amsterdam’s Metz store. Macleish was a prolific designer during the 1920s and 1930s, creating patterns for Morton Sundour fabrics.Read More →

  • Honiton Lace the beauty of complex patterns

    Honiton Lace the beauty of complex patterns

    Honiton lace is a type of bobbin lace made in Honiton, Devon, in the United Kingdom. Its ornate motifs and complex patterns are created separately, before being sewn into a net ground. Common motifs include daisies, roses, shamrocks, ivy leaves, lilies, camellias, convolvulus, poppies, briony, antwerp diamonds, trefoils, ferns, and acorns.Read More →

  • Peter McCulloch (b.1933) British textile designer

    Peter McCulloch (b.1933) British textile designer

    In the early 1960s, he taught at the Falmouth School of Art in Cornwall. Some of his textiles incorporated contrasting colors in small dots suggesting printed circuitry, as in his 1963 Cruachan fabric produced by Hull Traders.Read More →

  • Allan Walton (1891 – 1948) British painter, decorator, architect and textile designer

    Allan Walton (1891 – 1948) British painter, decorator, architect and textile designer

    He commissioned some of the most innovative screen prints of the 1930s, designed by Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant, as a principle of Allan Walton Fabrics. Read More →

  • Theo Moorman (1907 – 1990) British Weaver and Designer

    Theo Moorman (1907 – 1990) British Weaver and Designer

    Theo Moorman was a devoted artist with a lifetime of experience. She created her technique over a wide range of designs and textural combinations, exploring its potential. A new invention was every piece of work, and they were always full of vitality.Read More →

  • Eileen Ellis (b.1933) British textile designer

    Eileen Ellis (b.1933) British textile designer

    Between 1952 and 1954, Ellis was a textile department student at Central School of Arts & Crafts, specialising in weaving (she took a National Diploma in the subject).Read More →

  • Margaret Simeon (1910 – 1999) British Textile Designer

    Margaret Simeon (1910 – 1999) British Textile Designer

    She worked as a freelance designer of garment and furnishings textiles. Allan Walton Textiles, Edinburgh Weavers, Campbell Fabrics, and Fortnum and Mason were among her clientele. She taught textile printing at the Royal College of Art.Read More →

Reading List

You may also be interested in

Theo Moorman British Weaver and Designer – Encyclopedia of Design

Theo Moorman was a devoted artist with a lifetime of experience. She created her technique over a wide range of designs and textural combinations, exploring its potential. A new invention was every piece of work, and they were always full of vitality.

Alastair J.F. Morton (1910 – 1963) British textile manufacturer and painter – Encyclopedia of Design

Alastair J.F. Morton (1910 – 1963) was a British textile manufacturer and painter. He studied at Edinburgh University and Oxford University. Morton joined his family’s Morton Sundour Fabrics in 1931 and oversaw the company’s first screen-printed fabrics.

The Most Magnificent Thing by Ashley Spires – Encyclopedia of Design

by Ashley Spires (Author, Illustrator) Ashley Spires, an award-winning author and illustrator, has crafted an adorable picture book about an unnamed girl and her very best friend, a dog. The girl has a brilliant idea. “She’s going to make something Magnificent! She has a good idea of how it will turn out.

More design articles

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.