The simple Victorian prints that Laura Ashley had seen in the V&A worked brilliantly in monochrome, which, coupled with imported cotton, kept costs low, enabling customers to style themselves and their homes on a budget. “They somehow clocked the aspirational desires of a whole generation,” says Sebba. “And by producing these clothes that seemed to come from the countryside and were very cheap, and the household fabrics to go with it, they enabled a whole generation to ignore social class, and that was powerful.”
Getty ImagesThe ultra-feminine appeal of the brand reached far and wide – pictured, the Laura Ashley boutique in Madison Avenue, NYC, 1983 (Credit: Getty Images)
That their fabrics should be described as “an image of Englishness”, however, overlooks the company’s connection with Wales, where Laura was born. In 1960, now parents of three − and later, four − children, the couple relocated to a 500-acre farm in the Welsh Valleys, bringing the company with them, and providing welcome employment. A champion sheep shearer became their master garment cutter, and even when their products were stocked by Harrods and Liberty’s, “made in Wales” was printed on the labels, and the fabric dyed in the earthy browns, greens and grey-blues that recalled the landscape she loved.
This connection with the British countryside was part of the packaging of the look. “It was the first company to offer this whole lifestyle,” explains Sebba. “It wasn’t simply that you were buying a dress or decorating your walls, or making curtains, you were buying into this whole notion that the rural life was preferable to urban life.”
‘A simpler way of life’
Fifty years on, Carrie Bradshaw’s milkmaid look enacts this fantasy of a country life, as well as her desire for domestic stability, described by Laura Ashley as “security at home”, and central, she said, to her clothing’s appeal. “A rose-tinted idea of the past… is especially prevalent in times of systemic upheaval and uncertainty,” Dr Gaby Harris, a sociologist and lecturer in fashion cultures at Manchester Metropolitan University, tells the BBC.
