iStyle: Laura Ashley goes back to the future

At 60, Laura Ashley delves into its archives to uncover a little-seen side, writes Alexander Fury

Despite the fact that the label started to design clothes just as the Sixties began to swing, that decade’s graphic shifts are the last thing you think of when it comes to Laura Ashley. Instead, you think of pastoral simplicity, of shepherdesses and billowing romanticism.

The Laura Ashley label turns 60 this year, an anniversary that may be the motivation for confounding expectations. The label is doing just that by delving into its own archive. To begin, it’s reissuing a design from its first year of business, 1953-4 – a silk scarf with a checkerboard print that has been renamed Pelham – alongside a collection that pays homage to the era’s twin obsessions of high hemlines and Op Art prints.

The name Pelham comes from the South Kensington street where Ashley opened her first emporium in 1968 at the height of the Sixties. Business was slow to begin with, but by 1970, Ashley’s Fulham Road branch was shifting 4,000 frocks in a single week.

The label’s current switch backwards, from Seventies milkmaids to Sixties monochrome, is canny. The influence of the Sixties, so abundant for spring/summer 2013, is still running at full pelt – Burberry Prorsum name-checked Christine Keeler, Simone Rocha cut neat suits in Jackie Kennedy pink, and Pucci’s signature print whirled across short dresses above kinky boots. It’s the print that makes the Laura Ashley pieces swing, too, with above-the-knee dresses in square or triangle prints, or grid-patterned trousers and cardigans.

The styles are suitably clean and crisp as well, with no jabots, bows or puff sleeves in sight. There’s even a hint of punk. A shoot in 1976, the year Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood opened Seditionaries on the King’s Road, shows a Chrissie Hynde-like model slathered in eyeliner sporting a short, strict shift.

That’s the interesting thing about this archive collection: it shows a side of the label that many weren’t even aware existed, although it’s the very foundation of the business. The Pelham scarf was the first thing Laura and Bernard Ashley created. It’s amazing how something so old can suddenly look quite so new again.

The Laura Ashley Archive Collection 2013 is in stores and online, lauraashley.com