Laura Ashley, the cool 1960s and my life.

July 2013 saw the opening of Bath Fashion Museum‘s exhibition Laura Ashley: The Romantic Heroine. This was the largest Laura Ashley retrospective ever! The Bath Fashion Museum marked the 60th year of the company by celebrating the vision of the romantic heroine that Laura Ashley propelled in to fashion during the 1960s and 1970s. I liked the blogger who said: Looking around the packed Assembly Room, the crowd was largely female and “of a certain age”.

The exhibition paid homage to Ashley’s distinctive Georgian dresses, during a time when women were seeking escapism and solace in nostalgic days gone by. She recognised the zeitgeist of the time and prompted a generation of young women to dress as their romantic heroines (eg Thomas Hardy’s milkmaid from Tess of the d’Urbevilles).

The photo below from the Bath exhibition shows the mannequins dressed in a range of popular Laura Ashley prints. The 93 pieces showcased in the exhibition had been loaned to the exhibition from the company’s London and Welsh arch­ives, Bath Fashion Museum and The Bowes Museum in Durham. The curators noted that Laura Ashley’s interest in Bath in the early 1970s, and Bath’s association with Regency living and the novels of Jane Austen, may have helped inspire the Regency-style dresses.

Displays at the Laura Ashley the Romantic Heroine Exhibition in Bath

I adored Laura Ashley dresses from the time I was old enough to select and pay for my own clothing in 1966. But not because of rom­antic nonsense about heartbroken Georgian milk maids. The Vietnam War was becoming increasingly tragic in the late 1960s, and thinking university stud­ents wanted to be Bohemian, down-to-earth young women who did not fall (too easily) for young men’s chat-up lines. The materials we wore had to be honest cottons, not cheap and nasty synthetics that did not last. The Flower Power generation wanted pacifism, socialism, feminism, protection of the planet and recycling. But I had no idea if the designer was herself a committed member of the feminist generation.

In 1942, young Laura Mountney (1925–1985) left school in order to do her bit for the war effort in the Women's Royal Naval Service. During this period she met engineer Bernard Ashley at some sort of social institution for teens. After the war, she worked as a secretary for the National Federation of Women's Institutes in London, eventually marrying her beloved Bernard Ashley in 1949. The Women’s Institutes may not have been radical, but they were community-based organisations that provided women with educational opportunities and the chance to build new skills. Laura Ashley loved working with, and for, ambitious women.

The Ashley family's first Welsh factory was established in 1966. Bernard had developed his flat-bed printing process to produce many metres of fabric every week.

Advertising stressed the chaste cotton print maxi-dress in earth-hewn natural colours
 Note the notion of a pastoral idyll far away from mad city life.

Ruth Guilding recognised that Bernard’s skill as a businessman meant they had to sell even more cloth, and so they did. In 1966 Laura produced her first clothes for purely social occasions - long dresses with long, puffed sleeves that quickly became the Laura Ashley trademark. High-necked pintucked tops above maxi dresses, trimmed with lace and a soft tie around the waist that ended in a bow at the back.

The wholesome, rural image may have been because of Laura’s Welsh Chapel Christianity that led her to disapprove of clothing that flaunted the body (according to her husband). Or it may have resulted from Laura’s own history as a country girl, honest, simple and nostalgic.

The company was well aware of changing fashions. Their long dress pattern was not thrown out after a couple of years; once women switched from the mini to the maxi skirt at the end of the 1960s, they simply adapted to the new world. But they did not lose their high moral principles. Materials were sourced locally whenever possible. And some clothing items were manufactured to pay homage to historical honesty, whether or not those items sold well.

Laura Ashley wedding dress with lace, 1971

The first Laura Ashley retail outlet opened in South Kensington in 1968, and soon other shops opened across Britain. Laura Ashley was established in Australia and Canada in 1971, much to my great excitement. The first Paris shop opened in 1974, as did the first shop in the USA (San Francisco, naturally).