EXCLUSIVE: Laura Ashley to Open First U.K. Store Under New Owners, Marquee Brands

LONDON — Following its purchase by Marquee Brands in January, Laura Ashley is shifting into high gear with the opening of its first stand-alone U.K. store in more than five years and a 12-month celebration marking what would have been the 100th birthday of its founder.

The lifestyle brand known for its flower garden prints, Victorian-tinged designs and broderie anglaise details will make its official return to bricks-and-mortar retail with the opening of a flagship on Sept. 26 at the Lakeside mall in Essex, England, not far from London.

An announcement is expected Friday.

The new store will span nearly 10,000 square feet and offer Laura Ashley’s furniture, home decor, fashion and children’s collections in an immersive brand environment. It will be operated in partnership with Next plc, its retail licensee in the U.K. It is understood there are more stores to come.

“This opening represents a significant milestone in Laura Ashley’s return to the U.K. retail market and signals the next phase of growth for the brand,” said Rachael Terrace, chief commercial and growth officer of the New York-based Marquee Brands, which specializes in using licensing deals to accelerate established brands worldwide.

The Marquee stable also includes Martha Stewart, Ben Sherman, Totes, Isotoner, Motherhood Maternity and Body Glove.

“Laura Ashley stores have always been destinations of inspiration, where consumers could explore and immerse themselves in the brand’s world of design. In partnership with Next, we are proud to reintroduce this experience in a refreshed retail concept,” Terrace added.

The store will showcase furniture, soft home accessories, made-to-measure fabrics, wallpaper and paint collections. It will also offer interior design services and plans to host brand activations, product launches, and other events. The fashion will include womenswear, sleepwear and clothing for girls.

The yearlong celebration is called “Laura Ashley: 100 Years of an Icon” and kicked off this week with a birthday dinner at The Kensington Hotel in London, and the release of special-edition creations.

There’s a new wallpaper and fabric collection called The Waters Edge, created by Anna Eynon, a Swansea College of Art student, and winner of the New Designers Laura Ashley Lifestyle Award. The award recognizes a print design or collection that blends Laura Ashley’s heritage with contemporary innovation, and offers prize money and a paid internship to the winner.

Eynon’s design was inspired by Britain’s wetlands, and features flora and fauna with sensual curves. Laura Ashley is also collaborating with Brewers, a Royal Warrant holder, on other wall coverings that feature re-colored classics and current bestselling designs.

Laura Ashley has also worked with fragrance specialists Freckleface on a handmade candle called Vintage 100 that combines two of Laura’s favorite scents, English rose and wild blackberries.

Helen Ashmore, Laura Ashley’s longtime head of design, said the brand founded by Laura and her husband Bernard Ashley in 1953 “has never stood still, and evolved through the decades,” adding that she and her team want to stay true to that spirit.

They helped create the anniversary designs and oversee all the seasonal collections from a sunny new showroom, studio and archive in Hammersmith, west London.

“We’re always asking ourselves, ‘What would Laura do?’ She was a woman ahead of her time, a female founder in the 1950s,” Ashmore said during a walk-through of the latest fashion and home collections, the latter of which were inspired by Laura’s own residences over the years, in London’s Pimlico, northern France, and her native Wales.  

“I feel like I find something new each time I look through the archive, and it’s a real privilege to be the guardian and gatekeeper of her designs,” added Ashmore, whose team is constantly reworking colors and resizing motifs from the archives.

The archives also inspire the seasonal clothing collections, which are made under license by companies including Next. This season, there are houndstooth jackets, embroidered tartans, rose print evening dresses and pinwhale corduroy shirts with broderie anglaise details.  

Ashmore said she’s proud that Laura Ashley is continuing to support young talent, bringing designers such as Eynon on board, and buying the designs of other students whose aesthetic chimes with the brand.

Shortly after establishing the business, Laura brought in a young textile designer and artist, Brian Jones, to help her realize her vision. He remained at the company for more than 25 years, and later became a landscape and portrait artist.

Few British designer names have had the impact of Laura Ashley, one of the first lifestyle brands to captured the public’s imagination, especially in the late 1970s and into the 1980s when Princess Diana and her Sloane Ranger pals were wearing high, frilly Victorian collars, ditzy print skirts and rustling taffeta dresses with pouf sleeves.

Laura Ashley offered the full package to women in the U.S., Europe and Japan, where the Ashleys brokered a string of licensing deals and opened stores. Customers could dress themselves — and their homes — in Laura Ashley, spritz the cult fragrance, Laura Ashley No. 1, and pore over the decorating books to capture the brand’s distinctive, upper-class country look.

“I’m really a 19th-century person living in the 20th century,” Laura Ashley said in 1981. “I don’t like cities and I feel happiest in the countryside. I’m very much influenced by the country way of life.”

While the brand has had its ups and downs since Ashley’s death in 1985, it began to flourish once again under former owners Gordon Brothers, which bought Laura Ashley out of administration in 2020 and reset the business, which generates around $750 million in retail sales.

Heath Golden, chief executive officer of Marquee, told WWD earlier this year that he’s ready to take the growing business to the next level — while also using the Laura Ashley relationships, and the U.K. office, to help build the other brands in the portfolio.

“There are a lot of complementary, synergistic things we can do here,” Golden said. “Laura Ashley really has done very well building itself out across Europe and Asia.”

He added: “We will accelerate the great growth of Laura Ashley across its partners, very seamlessly with no disruption, as we then also think to look for other opportunities to further accelerate and cross-pollinate across other categories and geographies.”