PERIOD DRAMA: A selection of Laura Ashley archival designs from the 1980s through the 2010s has landed — ruffles, ditsy prints and all — at Beyond Retro’s Coal Drops Yard store in London as part of the brand’s “100 Years of an Icon” campaign, which is marking the life, legacy and influence of its late founder.
Laura Ashley‘s archive team worked with Beyond Retro on the edit, which is aimed at a new generation of vintage shoppers and collectors. The sale could not be happening at a better time, with vintage Laura Ashley prints featuring in season two of “Rivals,” the streaming series based on Jilly Cooper’s racy novels, set in the ’80s.
Beyond Retro’s windows are hung with romantic, Victorian-flecked dresses, some in breezy white cotton and lace, others in silk with rosettes and ruffles. The clothing racks are filled with white or printed blouses with bows, sailor collars or pouf sleeves. Colorful trousers, voluminous skirts and knits channel the high-energy and optimism of the ’80s.
Prices range from around 30 pounds to 300 pounds for the rarest pieces, which have all been sourced from the vast and well-organized Laura Ashley archive, located in a former salt mine in Cheshire, England.
The sale opens Friday and will run for eight weeks.
A Laura Ashley bow blouse, part of an archive sale at Beyond Retro in London.
Beyond Retro’s in-house studio has also created a limited-edition capsule of upcycled pieces using original deadstock Laura Ashley fabrics. The one-of-a-kind designs include unisex waistcoats and soft charm keychains.
“This is a really tiny selection of what we actually have, and while it was hard to let go of some the whole point is for people to have a piece of the archive,” said Poppy Marshall-Lawton, Laura Ashley’s vice president. “We want people to enjoy these clothes the same way we do.”
There could be more archive sales to come. Marshall-Lawton said the Laura Ashley team chose around 1,500 pieces and Beyond Retro made their own selection, but future sales might be done with different partners, and in different ways.
While Beyond Retro is selling some of the oldest pieces, “we still have a lot of products from the 2000s, and some childrenswear pieces as well, so we need to find new homes for all of those,” Marshall-Lawton said. “It will be an ongoing project because the archive is just immense.”
The archive sale follows last year’s opening of Laura Ashley’s first store, at the Lakeside mall in Essex, England, under new owners Marquee Brands.
