The company states that the brand will still have British heritage at its heart, with a British team of designers at the helm, continuing to fly the flag for the much-loved brand. An image from Laura Ashleys 1985 home catalog of a bedroom featuring the brands Country Roses pattern. Read our, {{#verifyErrors}} {{message}} {{/verifyErrors}} {{^verifyErrors}} {{message}} {{/verifyErrors}}. That sense of solidity yet specialness was conferred by the green and white tag inside every piece that read Made in Great Britain.. A dress from Sindiso Khumalos spring 2022 collection. One reason for the popularity of the brand and perhaps why the peoples princess favored it was that the clothes, well made and substantial, were also modestly priced. It remains to be seen whether the new partnership will produce clothes that excite todays fashionistas, part of the kudos in Laura Ashleys revival has been down to todays teenagers wanting sustainable, pre-loved garments. She didnt go in and say, Lets create a fashion collection. It was really, What is it that I use in my life? says Penne Cairoli, who has been president of Laura Ashley in the Americas for nearly a decade. When the pandemic broke the consortium threw in the towel, placing Laura Ashley into administration and closing the stores permanently. I tried to make it as reasonable as possible, Hay said, as that was something I appreciated about Laura Ashley.. By the mid-80s, what had started as a D.I.Y. In addition, Laura Ashley will also keep operating its own website. 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The next chapter in the Gordon Brothers rebirth of the brand is a deal with US marketing group IMG to relaunch Laura Ashley fashion, home and lifestyle ranges in the UK and internationally, working alongside Next and other partners.. Next apologises to staff after IT problems cause months of underpaying, Executive pay system is broken, says Church of Englands pension board, Next and group of investment firms buy JoJo Maman Bb, Next cuts sick pay for unvaccinated staff who are self-isolating, Next rings up bumper Christmas but warns of price hikes ahead, Next: relax immigration rules or we could struggle in run-up to Christmas, Next to run Gaps business in UK and Ireland, Next to repay 29m in Covid rates relief amid strong revenue growth, Next upgrades profit forecast again after surge in sales, The gamechanger for Next was becoming a virtual high street. Orders from high street shops soon flooded in. Each email has a link to unsubscribe. The pair spent 10 pounds on wood for a screen, dyes and linen and, after poring over a handful of instructional library books, began silk-screening textiles at the kitchen table of their small London flat. The smocks, knee-length and sleeveless, were made from cotton drill a heavyweight fabric similar to denim usually in a striped print; young women wore them as fashion frocks. Four years later, having endured a devastating flood that nearly wiped out the fledgling business, they moved again, this time to Lauras native Wales. 'More has to be done to prevent deaths due to drowning in Wales', Drowning prevention measures are 'hindered by a lack of coordination from the Welsh Government', a Senedd committee found, Police cordon off row of houses in Ammanford after man is found with 'serious injuries', A man, aged 43, has been arrested on suspicion of assault and criminal damage. 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Want the best food, film, music, arts and culture news sent straight to your inbox? The Laura Ashley store in Knightsbridge, London, circa 1985. Enter your password to log in. And yet, despite the brands enduring influence, few seem to know that Laura Ashley like Liz Claiborne, Diane von Furstenberg and Donna Karan, among other eponymous designers of their own lines was a real woman, not just a mellifluous name. At the same time, of course, the British countryside idyll was traditionally a lifestyle reserved for a certain kind of person, namely someone white and Protestant. Recent years have seen a surge in demand for the whimsical, ditsy floral-printed prairie dresses with which Laura Ashley found fame. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/21/t-magazine/laura-ashley-batsheva.html. The following year, while awaiting the birth of their first child, they printed scarves, largely because they had just returned from a trip to Italy, where young girls were emulating Audrey Hepburns character in Roman Holiday (1953) and knotting them around their necks. Poppy Marshall-Lawton, head of brand and partnerships at Laura Ashley, said: "We are very pleased to be partnering with Next to take the Laura Ashley brand to the next level. In the 1980s, the company expanded into the home furnishings of my youth: bedspreads, upholstered furniture, draperies, wallpaper and ceramic tiles in tiny florals ideally arranged all together to create a matchy-matchy sanctuary. But perhaps, in addition to drawing inspiration from Welsh and English cottages, she was thinking of French country chateaus, since by the time of the books publication, she and Bernard had moved to France and purchased one. In 1955, the young family relocated to Surrey and, in 1957, moved their factory to a 1,200-square-foot coach house in rural Kent. The pandemic has caused a wave of city dwellers to light out for less populous locales, and others, quarantined at home, to LARP as frontierswomen in urban kitchens, baking cookies, fiddling with sourdough starters and canning their own food. At 18, she joined the Womens Royal Naval Service, popularly known as the Wrens; for a time, she operated the teleprinter in an English country mansion from which the Normandy landings were being planned. The look was so popular the flowing flowery frocks chimed well with the pervading hippie sensibility of the time that when the brand opened its second London store on the Fulham Road in the 1970 (the first opened in South Kensington in 1968), it sold 4000 of the dresses in the first week alone. With their high necks, full skirts, mutton sleeves and lace and ruffle adornments, these dresses, along with prim pin-tucked cotton blouses, lace-trimmed nightgowns and grosgrain-ribbon-tied hats, solidified the Laura Ashley look.. At the brands height, the Fulham Road store, famous for its green marble facade, sold 4,000 dresses in a single week. Designers of home dcor, too, are embracing the English country look and offering a warm, cozy corrective to minimalism. For most of the late 50s and 60s the company made its money selling small scarves, tea towels, placemats and rolls of fabric, and by 1966 they were selling 5,000 metres of fabric per week to companies like John Lewis and Heals. As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. Here's everything you need to know. The brands fortunes changed dramatically in 1985 when Laura tragically died aged 60 of a brain haemorrhage after falling down a flight of stairs. A Batsheva X Laura Ashley mini prairie dress in the Fairford floral pattern and an apron and oven mitts in Emilia. The rather bohemian clan, whod once made their home in two tents on the banks of an estuary, lived above the shop for several years before putting down real roots in Carno, which became the longtime headquarters of their empire, for which all four of the couples children went on to work. The 2020 deal, which involved the closure of all 70 Laura Ashley stores saw the company refocus on homeware in the UK and Europe including furniture, wallpaper, paint, lighting, soft furnishings. Next, they made tea towels, napkins and place mats with simple geometric patterns. The multi-year deal with IMG covers apparel, footwear, accessories, beauty, homeware items and hospitality offerings, which will help Laura Ashley expand internationally, in China, India, Australia and New Zealand, the UK and Europe, both online and via stores. By clicking Sign up you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use, Cookie policy and Privacy notice. A 1980s-era Laura Ashley print advertisement. By then, the business, which had 220 shops in 12 countries and had expanded into home furnishings, was on the brink of flotation on the stock market, where it was valued at 200m. 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There are always things worth rethinking. British fashion label Laura Ashley has become the latest business casualty of the coronavirus pandemic. From prairie dress powerhouse to high street failure, Laura Ashley lost its bucolic magic when it stopped being Laura Ashley, says Chloe Street, Victoria Holden wearing fashion by Laura Ashley in 1993, Jacqueline Crevatas wearing medieval English style tunic with boots and legging from the Laura Ashley Autumn/Winter 1988 fashion, Laura Ashley Chintzwear Collection in 1999, Della in a flower printed two piece in blue and white Laura Ashlet outfit in 1974, A model wears a white cotton frilly dress from Laura Ashley in 1974, Model wearing summer fashions from Laura Ashley in 1975, Peter Robinson Hat with flowers from Laura Ashley in 1975, Laura Ashley fashion with Jane Sturdy in 1989, Jane Sturdy and Billy Livingstone model fashion by Laura Ashley in 1989, Laura Ashley autumn/winter collection in 1989, Model wearing Laura Ashley black silk dress in 1992, Felicity Dennison wearing a 1960 Laura Ashley dress in 1993, Laura Ashley autumn/winter collection in 1997, Laura Ashley Cashmere cardigan and shoes in 1998, Laura Ashley fashion winter farment collection 2000, Laura Ashley fashion Autumn 2000 home collection, Laura Ashley debut swimwear collection 2001, Laura Ashley sleeveless paisley print dress 2002, A fashion model wearing a Laura Ashley winter coast and gloves in 2012. After a number of years of financial difficulty Laura Ashley finally went into administration in March 2020, with the current coronavirus pandemic blamed as a final financial challenge too far. You can opt-out at any time by signing in to your account to manage your preferences. By the time of Laura Ashley's death in 1985, the company had over 220 stores around the world, employed over 4,000 people and turned over US$130 million annually. The uniform (very good quality navy gabardine, and you could press it and wear it with a clean white cotton shirt and collar and tie, she told an English newspaper) shaped her lifelong belief in quality fabrics. Thats where the future comes from.. And in truth, it never really recovered. Various retrenchments and reorganisations came and went, but the company never recaptured its heyday. Perhaps you had a Laura Ashley bedroom, as I did, my bedspread, sheets, dust ruffle and wallpaper all featuring the Bramble pattern, whose deep green ivy and royal blue strawberries are the backdrop to so many of my teenage memories. On Tuesday the troubled fashion and homewares retailer announced it had filed for administration after rescue talks were thwarted by the Covid 19 outbreak. Still others, weary of technology and its attendant distractions, are heading back to the land, or at least to a patch of it, in search of an alternative to our techno-dystopia. Laura Ashley homeware has also been available via Next online as well as being sold in 50 UK Next stores. All rights reserved. But like most fashion, what goes around comes around and Laura Ashley, along with kohl eyeliner and goth-core is now very much on trend. Living quite remotely as I have done, I have not been caught up with city influences, she once told an interviewer. Laura and her younger sister, Mary, were often sent by train to Wales to visit their grandmother and great-aunts, and it was there that they witnessed a strict Baptist household with polished brass fixtures and women with mending in their laps. Losing Laura Ashley from the British high street is definitely sad, and for the 2,700 people whos jobs are at risk it is, of course, a tragedy, but in truth, the real Laura Ashley aesthetic had been lost for some time. This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. The embattled clothing and home furnishings retailer will reintroduce its homeware via Nexts over 500 UK stores and website operating in over 70 countries from spring 2021. Laura Ashley garments were made of natural textiles, often cotton, like calico and corduroy, along with wool, silk, velvet or lace. Laura Ashleys brand, its archives and related intellectual property were bought by Gordon Brothers, a global advisory, restructuring and investment firm. They are also timeless in that theyre unlikely to go out of style by next season after all, theyve been in style, more or less, since the mid-1800s. The brand is associated with pie crust collars of the style made famous, and fashionable, by the Princess of Wales; fashion moved on and the minimalist 90s had no place for flowery prints or fussy necklines. Don't worry if you're on holiday in a villa of your own, there are legal ways to watch the finale live and on catch-up from outside the UK. But the brand, like so many others, has struggled during the last couple of years and went into administration (the British term for bankruptcy) in March 2020 (as a result, the 153 remaining Laura Ashley stores in the U.K. and Ireland were closed), before being acquired the following month by the investment firm Gordon Brothers, which has plans to reignite Mrs. Ashleys original vision, as Ramez Toubassy, the former president of brands for Gordon Brothers, said at the time of the acquisition. Laura Ashley, the fashion brand rescued from administration in March 2020, has signed a partnership with IMG to relaunch its womenswear range. In 1979 Laura Ashley launched the home furnishings brand to add to the portfolio, as well as a range of perfume. Its popularity was further cemented when then-Lady Diana Spencer, pin-up girl for the look, began wearing its quintessentially English designs most notably a pie crust collar shirt she wore to a photocall which caused such a surge in demand the brand was forced to halt production. Perhaps you (or you and your mother) wore a demure ditsy floral print dress to church on Easter Sunday, or you went to the mall and left with a cotton button-down with a Peter Pan collar, a style favored by the oft-imitated Princess Diana. 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The partnership with IMG, a US marketing and brand licensing company, will involve the launch of a clothing range, although it has not been made clear when it will be available. Khumalo, who is based in South Africa and references her Zulu heritage in her work with bright, sustainable fabrics, admires Ashleys ability to tell stories with her textiles. For several collections now, Khumalo has been looking at portraiture from the late 1800s and early 1900s of Black women, including formerly enslaved African American women who had been freed and Black women in Europe, and notes that although their lives may have been very different from those of their white counterparts the women Laura Ashley was referencing aspects of their clothing, with big, big, big shoulders and a lot of embroidery details, Khumalo says, were often quite similar: Theres an aesthetic of what people wear, and that goes beyond a specific racial group its what societys wearing at a time, she says. Throughout the nineties and noughties, fashion took a back seat to homewares and then last year the brand made several attempts to resuscitate its fashion offering. ': Inside the Lionesses' Euros party as Jill Scott pulls an all-nighter, I could only continue to breastfeed because of my privilege, Pharmacies in talks with Royal Mail to minimise impact of strikes, As a meta show about navel-gazing Hollywood, Irma Vep should not be this good. Three years later, tragedy struck. Laura Ashley was first the major retailer to go into administration because of the coronavirus pandemic. For this collection, Hay used Laura Ashley archival floral prints and line drawings to create a series of cheerful, flouncy dresses, skirts and blouses that, with their layered patterns, neon flourishes and chic cuts, feel at once retro and current, and that are priced lower than her regular line. You can unsubscribe at any time. 2021 Associated Newspapers Limited. Business was discussed at every mealtime, Jane Ashley, the eldest, has said. Put another way: If you are a woman who grew up in the 80s or early 90s, chances are you have a memory of coveting, wearing or living with something by the brand, known for its floral chintz fashions and housewares. With the owners departed and the frilly aesthetic at odds with the pervading flesh-baring minimalism of the nineties, Laura Ashley fell on hard times. The business flourished, somewhat ironically, in cities: The first shop selling only Laura Ashley products opened in London, at 23 Pelham Street in South Kensington, in 1968, and another, on Fulham Road, arrived the following year. From spring 2021 Laura Ashley Home will be available to see, touch and buy from Next's 500 UK stores and also via its website. Originally from Merthyr Tydfil, Laura Ashley soon moved the growing business to a factory in Carno in Powys, which became the headquarters for the global brand for decades. The flotation went ahead and within five years Sir Bernard Ashley, as he had become, had sold on the company to foreign investors MUI. Simon Wolfson, chief executive at Next, said: "Next is delighted to be partnering with Gordon Brothers and the Laura Ashley team to relaunch this iconic British brand. Laura Ashley was one of the first to market an ideal of the quintessential English countryside, a concept later echoed by brands like Emma Bridgewater, Boden and Cath Kidston. Laura Ashleys popularity reached a zenith in the 80s when its billowing prairie dresses and pie-crust collars came to define the Sloane Ranger look of the era. However this deal did not include the stores, manufacturing and logistics operations in the UK or Ireland. There were some pre-pandemic attempts to revive it: a capsule collection with Rag & Bone that featured baseball caps and mens hoodies printed with sprigs of pink flowers; another with Urban Outfitters that, with pieces like an empire-waist minidress in a pink toile print and a quilted baby-doll frock bedecked with swans, felt like Victoriana passed through a Riot Grrrl filter. Not long after, in March 1954, the couple, Laura and Bernard Ashley, officially founded Ashley Mountney Ltd. Mountney being Lauras maiden name. In 1952, a 28-year-old secretary attended a traditional handicrafts exhibition at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London. The soon-to-be Princess of Wales, in a Laura Ashley skirt, 1980. In May 2019, the brand launched a somewhat surprising brand collaboration with grungy teenage high street retailer Urban Outfitters. "We believe that the combination of the design vision of the Laura Ashley team alongside Next's online and retail infrastructure can combine to revitalise this world class brand.". We just developed in our own way. Indeed, the name Laura Ashley has long been shorthand for anything romantic and evocative of the countryside, examples of which, in recent years, have abounded anew. But the brand did not die. The range will also be showcased in selected Next stores. Not the kind of mass produced items that even some of the premium brands churn out. Princess Diana was always the brands most famous unofficial ambassador: standing next to David Bowie at a Live Aid concert in a mint green drop-waist ensemble with a polka dot sash; as a young, still unmarried kindergarten teacher in a diaphanous skirt, a child at her hip and another standing beside her. There, in a small rural town called Machynlleth, they opened their first retail shop, a kind of general store that, in addition to Ashley Mountney products, as they were still called, also sold commodities like honey, walking sticks and Welsh flannel clothing. Eventually, though, Bernard felt that an unambiguously feminine-sounding moniker would better suit their products, and they rechristened the company Laura Ashley. At the time, Laura Ashley Ltd. was at its height, but Ashley herself was the soul of the business, and it soon began to founder. Magnus-Lewinska Mayotte/Bridgeman Images. It was all super cute, but perhaps failed to strike a chord with the die-hard Laura Ashley fans that might just have had the clout to bring the brand back to life. Princess Diana wearing Laura Ashley to watchPrince Charles play polo at Tidworth in 1981, You must be at least 18 years old to create an account, Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number, I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from Evening Standard. All of this arrived, as though shed planned it this way, in time to be the perfect antidote to 60s-era mod shifts and synthetic fabrics, and as many young hippies were rejecting the complications of urbanity in search of a simpler and more self-sufficient life. By 1990, Laura Ashley was in the red and, by 2003, it had shuttered all of its stores in the U.S. and Canada to focus on licensing and e-commerce. While other designers were relentlessly focused on the cosmopolitan and the new, Laura Ashley was looking to the Victorian past, with its sense of propriety and correspondingly modest silhouettes, and to its designers ultimately rather pastoral life.
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