Revival of a great British icon
dresses, she was this fun, exuberant, creative woman... I even had the matching sheet sets in my bedroom.”
She’s proud, too, to make pieces that are unashamedly focused on all things homely and traditionally feminine. ‘The whole domestic sphere has been reinvented during these past two years of Covid,” she notes. “People still want to feel good at home. If you love wearing prints and ruffles when you’re out, why not wear them at home, too?”
Hay wants to cater to women whose tastes skew unashamedly ladylike in line with her own modest style. “It’s so transformative to wear a beautiful print, a bow, a cinched waist or a puff sleeve which is such an antidote to minimalism. I think many women feel the same. You feel like you have to look this way to feel professional and fit into this man’s world, but it’s great to have that maximalism and eccentricity.” D’angelo and Gordon have grand plans for Laura Ashley, which they say has appeal around the world, especially in Japan, South Korea and the US, though they’re also careful to emphasise how important the UK is to them as the label’s birthplace. This collaboration will be available to buy here through Net-aporter and Matchesfashion. com, with prices from £37 to £228.
“I want it to mean the same thing to a new generation as it meant to us when we grew up with it,” says D’angelo, who remembers decorating her children’s nurseries with Laura Ashley wallpaper. “When I told people I was coming to work on the brand, every single one of them had a nostalgia for it.”
She and Gordon mention everything from floor tiles to bikes, phone cases and tech accessories as being part of their ambitions, as well “experiential” concepts like the tea rooms, which already exist in several UK locations, including in the town of St Austell, in Cornwall.
Quite what Laura Ashley herself would make of this quest we’ll never know, but she would, surely, be delighted to see such love and passion for the label she began still going, nearly 70 years later.