Alex Lloyd
AFTER 67 years, the iconic Laura Ashley brand is no more. All 147 UK shops shut their doors for the final time yesterday.
But while the company undoubtedly has a stellar place in fashion history, and won fans everywhere from Princess Diana to Holly Willoughby, to many of its staff, past and present, Laura Ashley was so much more than just a place to work, it was family.
Here we talk to some of those people about their memories…
AS a textiles student on a budget in the early 1980s, Judy Evans saved her university grant to buy the must-have item every girl wanted in her wardrobe – a Laura Ashley skirt. A few years later, in September 1985, she was walking through the doors of the iconic British brand’s factory in Carno, Powys, for her first day on its inaugural graduate trainee scheme. But the day was to be memorable for all the wrong reasons.
Founder and namesake Laura, who had just celebrated her 60th birthday, fell on the stairs at her daughter’s home and suffered a brain haemorrhage that would take her life 10 days later. “I’d been so excited. I grew up in an era where you aspired to buy Laura Ashley clothes and dress like Princess Diana and Fergie, it was the original lifestyle brand,” says Judy, a former quality control manager.
“But as word of the tragedy spread among the staff, the mood was sombre. The Ashley family were part of the community. They had lived in Carno since the 1960s and all four children had followed them into the business.
“It was a close-knit rural village, many generations from each family worked for Laura, as machinists, drivers, manager, cleaners. Some still ran their farms alongside their jobs. It was a unique place.”
For staff, the death of the internationally renowned designer – born Laura Mountney to modest means in Dowlais, Merthyr Tydfil, in 1925 – really was like losing a relative.
Early employees like Gwlithyn Rowlands – who worked for the company alongside five of her siblings and both parents – recall Laura sitting at a machine alongside them when they were working overtime for large orders.
The brand’s unique style stemmed from Laura herself, a secretary and mum of four who started out making tea towels and aprons on her kitchen table in 1953.
EIGHT years later, Laura and her husband Bernard opened their first shop in Wales, expanding into women and children’s clothes, and soft furnishings.
Her romantic, frilly Sloane Ranger style coincided with the arrival of the maxi skirt, and when Princess Diana was photographed wearing one at the time of her engagement to Prince Charles, the brand took off internationally.
Once the proud owner of a Queen’s Award for Export Achievement and powerful enough to draw visits from Princess
Diana when it opened a state-of-the-art manufacturing plant in Newtown in 1987, the fashion and homeware brand still had international sales of £276million in 2000.
But its new Malaysian owners MUI struggled to make it profitable as the new
FAMOUS FAN: Breakfast TV star Holly Willoughby in Laura Ashley
century’s desire for so-called fast fashion overshadowed Laura Ashley’s quality, Britishmade products. And on March 23, the day the UK’s lockdown began, the business filed for administration.
The global brand, archives and intellectual property were sold to Gordon Brothers, a restructuring and investment firm, in April but hopes of reviving a scaleddown version of the stores and manufacturing arm were dashed by the pandemic.
Now some 2,700 loyal staff like Liz Smithies are without jobs. Liz, 51, from Chorley, Lancs, has been a Laura Ashley employee for nearly 33 years, starting in the Preston store before moving on to work in Wakefield, York and Stockport.
She is finishing her career back in Preston, returning from furlough to run the closing-down sale alongside her daughter Flora, 20, who she dressed in the brand’s children’s range as a little girl. “Laura Ashley is very special, it gets under your skin,” she says. “The back story and the fact it was a family business for so long is important to staff. I’m