Interview: Laura Ashley prepares for major SS24 fashion comeback

By

Sandra Halliday

Published
Nov 22, 2023

Laura Ashley fashion is back. Well, almost. After its 2020 collapse, the brand’s comeback under new owner Gordon Brothers and in a retail deal with Next was missing one key component — the fashion offer on which the label was founded. But that’s all about to change with a full-on relaunch in April next year.

Not that the label has been completely quiet fashion-wise, its high-end Batsheva link-up since 2021 and other more recent collabs with Rag & Bone, Joanie and Lucky Brand have been notable. Plus there was a girlswear launch in 2021.

But this new development is Laura Ashley as we used to know and love it — branded womenswear with affordable price points, a romantic edge, and lots of signature prints. On top of this there’s a healthy dose of contemporary thinking to make it more relevant for the modern consumer.

Coming just after its 70th anniversary year, consumers can expect plenty of reimagined floral prints, fluid shapes, some surprisingly simple separates, mainly natural fibre fabrics and a day-into-night offer pitched to a wide age range.

Fashionnetwork.com sat down with brand VP Poppy Marshall-Lawton to talk about what’s ahead.

Fashionnetwork.com: Some may have been surprised that, when Laura Ashley was bought out of administration, fashion wasn’t part of the mix given that its fashion ops had been improving. But clearly home was the big money-spinner, which made sense given the pandemic/post-pandemic strength of the category. So why relaunch fashion now?

Poppy Marshall-Lawton: When we [originally] relaunched, some of the team were old Laura Ashley and a few of us came across and transitioned the brand through to what it is today. Home was really a focus as I think it was really quite clear what you [could do] with home. We evolved it and moved it forward, but with fashion it felt like it had lost its way over recent times and it wasn’t just a case of ‘let’s go, let’s relaunch it’. We really needed to decide what was right for [the category], for the brand and where it was right to pitch it to the customer. 

We’ve been through a lot of different iterations. We’ve had a lot of conversations with a lot of different people. We’d get quite far down the line and then we hadn’t felt the sourcing was really right or the look and feel [were right]. So we wanted to take our time to make sure we got it right. 

I feel like the team of 18 of us turned Laura Ashely around very quickly [when] we relaunched. If you talk to our partners, I think we almost finished everybody off relaunching in seven months from partnering with them! It was just about being considerate with fashion and getting it right. 

FN: Clearly it’s a very different business model now than pre-administration with an American owner and partnership deals with other businesses, Next in the UK/Europe being key. How does that work?

PML: So we [at Laura Ashley] have a brand team. Helen Ashmore is head of design. We have a head of marketing so we really curate all the ranges together and then we work with expert partners to create collections. We chose to partner with Next because they are such a huge force within fashion in the UK but they’ve got a real focus on brands. We work with the Next team dedicated to working with brands. There's a new lady who’s been brought on board to really work with our team and to lead the look and feel of the fashion collection. But we’ve also got someone on the team for it.

We launched girlswear in 2021. And some of the team who’ve been working on that really successful girlswear are now working on the women’s collection as well. You really feel you’ve got a team that are bringing it on. Girlswear has done incredibly well. It’s quietly ticked along. There are lovely party dresses — everything you think Laura Ashely should be. So yes, there’s a dedicated team who are really focused on the Laura Ashely [womenswear] collection and we felt as well it was right to give it its own moment.

FN: In a fashion sector that drops SS24 collections in December and January, some might think April is late for a spring 24 launch.

PML: It feels really right to launch in the spring. To be able to launch cotton dresses in really beautiful vibrant colours and to hit spring properly and not rush it through. At one point we were aiming for February but said ‘actually no, we’ve got to get it right. We’ve got to get the feel right, we’ve got to get the material right. We’ve got to get the colours right’.

We actually launched Home [for spring] in January, but we’ve got amazing [items in there] like chunky throws and blankets. But April feels like the time they actually want to buy the dress and are looking forward to their summer holiday and are really going for it in that way. So yes, hopefully we’ve got a really good opportunity. 

The plan

FN: And how will the launch play out?

PML: The main launch is online. But we’ll be launching through some Next stores. The number is not decided yet but there will be a minimum of five. We’re still working through the strategy. We have all of our own shop-in-shops in Next for Home in this country. In Westfield White City we’ve got our flagship, which our team work in and curate and then that’s the template to take to all the other stores. It will go into Westfield and be part of our flagship offer.

FN: So it’s all about ‘Laura Ashley’ rather than home or fashion being very different from each other, which is a danger people fear when companies buy brands and form external partnerships?

PML: Yes, and that’s been very important to us in terms of design development. We now have a ‘head of design’, rather than a head of fashion design and a head of home. That really harks back to how Laura Ashley started, how it all came from one person. So she ensures that there’s that cohesive look and feel, a crossover. For instance, when we’re looking at prints and extracting them from the archive sometimes it becomes a pick for Home but it can end up as a pick for Fashion or vice-versa.

FN: Are you expecting the new fashion offer to sit only within the Next ecosystem?

PML: I think the intention is with fashion launching exclusively at Next, but Next’s business has got a really big focus on wholesaling. They’re starting to do that with some of the home collections for Laura Ashley. That will be the next step as well to get the fashion into other retailers.

FN: And what about internationally?

PML: With Next we have an agreement for the UK and Europe. Internationally we have some other partnerships, so we already have a partner in Japan. Fashion in Japan has a different look and feel. It’s very appropriate for that market but it's still Laura Ashley and still curated with our team. We provide the prints and the colourways and it’s the materials we like to use.

As for America, we wanted to make sure we got the UK right first. We don’t yet have a fashion partner in America but it’s absolutely something we really want to push forward with. We’ve just restructured the business in the US and we’ve bought in a few other people. Gordon Brothers has now established a Laura Ashely team.

Next's involvement

FN: How much input does Next have into what you’re producing?

PML: All of our partners bring concepts to us, but that’s from the Laura Ashely brand having presented seasonal trend packs so it might be the prints, it might just be inspirational images. I think it’s also the tone of voice. 

FN: And your own design chief is the overall driver?

PML: Helen our head of design has got a good tone of voice to make people understand [the brand]. She was previously at Laura Ashley as one of the designers on Home, but she has a textile design background. Her first graduate job was at a handbag company and she’s still got that touchpoint into fashion. But then we work with our partners. Next has got an incredible sourcing route and they’ve got really high standards of quality. People are now buying into brands but I think the brand team for fashion at Next have been doing it for a while.

FN: They certainly know their brands!

PML: Yes, take Lipsy [a brand Next owns]. It’s a very different proposition to Laura Ashely so it’s nice to know we’ve got our own dedicated team.

Collaborations

FN: And are more collaborations on the cards?

PML: There’s nothing confirmed but we’re having a number of conversation for next year. It’s still a really nice way to do slightly different things. Batshava is a pleasure to work with, she’s the number-one Laura Ashely fan. She’s just launched a drop at John Lewis and there’s another one coming for spring that’s been really good fun because John Lewis has let her be her.

Most of the archive is in Cheshire but we’ve actually bought a lot of the original artworks up to London and created a space within our office to keep it perfectly preserved and protected. So it means if someone wants to do a collaboration they can come and see. We have a wishlist in the team of the kind of people we’d love to work with and it’s growing. It’s lovely to find new start-ups. We’d love to do some collaborations with some British companies. Joanie is a lovely British company where we worked closely with the founder and she was wonderful. 

I’d love to do the unexpected too because when you go back and really read about Laura Ashley, over the decades people thought it was quite conservative. But there was a lot of fun and a lot of brave colours and she just did things because she felt it was right. We have to hold on to some of that fun and make sure we do some of these exciting collaborations. We’ve got a lot of resource to go back through. It’s such a beautiful brand to be able to work with.

FN: Clearly such collabs are a marketer’s dream. But what’s the wider marketing plan behind the fashion relaunch?

PML: In April we’ll have launch events. We co-invest with Next in terms of marketing but there’s a lot of digital marketing already planned to get the message out. Next has also got the wholesale team who we work with as well to go and talk to other retailers.

We’ve done our first shoot and it’s going back to our heritage. It’s on the Welsh coastline. There’s going to be a lot of marketing support from our team. We’ve set up our new Instagram so we’ve now got a fashion Instagram as well. It’s really important to give fashion its own Instagram space.  

We were talking yesterday saying we’d love to do a fashion shoot with the whole team. We’ve got 23-60 year-olds in the team so there’s some fun to be had!