Laura Ashley

While working in London, Ashley met an engineer, Bernard Ashley, at a youth club in Wellington and got married to him in 1949. Bernard helped in realizing her dream of building up a business of her own.

The couple had four children together and all their children too were involved in the family business: David (designed the shops), Jane (company’s official photographer), Emma (company fashion designer) and Nick (also, company fashion designer).

In 1985, Ashley was visiting her children for the celebration of her 60th birthday and she fell down from her daughter’s home in Cotswolds and taken to hospital immediately but died after barely surviving for 9 days in coma.

Laura Ashley was born in Dowlais, Merthyr Tydfil, Wales, and was raised in a civil service family as a strict Baptist. She was initially educated in Wales at Marshall’s School but was soon sent to Elmwood School, Croydon.

At the age of 13, she was sent back to Wales and was enrolled into the Aberdare Secretarial School. But she soon left the school and joined the Women’s Royal Naval Service in 1942.

After serving in the Women’s Royal Naval Service, Ashley moved to London to work as a secretary at the National Federation of Women’s Institutes from 1945-1956. She had settled down in London by now with her husband.

Whilst working as secretary and looking after her family, Ashley also started taking development projects of her Institute like working on quilts and designed headscarves, napkins, tablemats, etc., a craft she had learnt from her grandmother.

Ashley and her husband, Bernard, spent �10 in wood for the screen frame, dyes and a few yards of linen and she started creating printed fabrics. She started to print Victorian style headscarves in 1953.

Quickly, her printed Victorian scarves became very famous and big retail brands like ‘John Lewis’ started asking for it. Ashley’s husband left his daytime job to cope with the growing demands of the family business.

She was in-charge of the design and Bernard took care of the operational side of the business. They hired employees and named the company as ‘Ashley Mountney’ but later Bernard changed it to ‘Laura Ashley’.

Ashley’s most prominent work is the establishment of her fashion brand, ‘Laura Ashley’ with her husband. She started with designing scarves and ultimately set up a cottage industry that was worth 200 million pounds at the time of her death.