Passionate about painting and drawing since childhood, Laura Mountney attended art classes at a rural women’s association, but did not receive any training in design. In 1951, she tried textile printing, and offered her first creations to London department stores, who were immediately seduced. With her husband, Bernard Ashley, who worked with start-up companies and in particular with screen printing and sales, she left London for Kent where the couple opened a factory and workshop. This was where L. Ashley created her flower prints, inspired by antique fabrics and Victorian motifs, for interior design. In 1955, she moved to Wales. In the 1960s, she began to design Edwardian style dresses. The first shop opened in London in 1968. Twenty years later, the company became a multinational corporation with an annual income of more than £100 million. When she died in 1985, L. Ashley left behind her an empire with a style that had become famous throughout the world, but which, in the absence of renewal, could not resist the evolution of sensitivity at the dawn of the twenty-first century.
