This paper will discuss the career and personal style of designer, Laura Ashley. The discussion will include a brief background on the designer, and will show the type of business that the designer ran, as well as explain how her company lasted for five decades. Finally, the paper will illustrate examples of the designer's products and look, as well as explain why this designer is important.
The apparel and furnishing designer, Laura Ashley, began her career in fashion and interior decorating by selling tea towels. Ashley first started silk-screening linen dish towels with her husband, Bernard Ashley, on their kitchen table in 1953. Mrs. Ashley was experiencing a difficult first pregnancy and wanted to pass the time until her child's birth by making patchwork home furnishings. Ashley was frustrated by the scarcity of small prints in London at the time, so she decided to make her own. Husband Bernard, a natural entrepreneur, thought that if they used his wife's silk-screened designs on tea towels, which could easily be cut and sewn into a marketable product. The couple read books about how to cut fabric and make patterns, and by the 1960s, Laura Ashley had branched out into designing nightgowns and aprons. Ashley's original designs were inspired by Victorian prints and romantic ideas (Murphy 150).
Ashley formed Laura Ashley, Inc., and 40 years later her lines of home furnishing products and clothing were being sold in 475 retail outlets spread out over four continents. Laura Ashley, Inc., also had a booming catalogue business. The designer has risen from her modest London apartment to head an entire home furnishings empire. She owned her own Welsh workshops, which made all of the products to service her retail outlets.
Then, at 61, Laura died unexpectedly in a car crash in 1985. When the founder of Laura Ashley, Inc. and Laura Ashley, Ltd. died, her company was soon sold, and shortly thereafter, its stock ...