Bath Fashion Museum to host Laura Ashley exhibit

Bath’s fashion museum is to host the first retrospective exhibit

celebrating the works of the late Welsh fashion designer and businesswoman Laura Ashley this summer.

Set to run from July 13 to August 26, the exhibition coincides with the retailer’s 60th anniversary and will focus on the early boom years, capturing the Laura Ashley look that in the 1960s and 1970s inspired a generation of women to dress as though they were the milkmaid ‘Tess of the d’Urbervilles’ from Thomas Hardy’s novel.

The exhibition will showcase more than 70 dresses, infused with the designer’s signature 19th-century style romantic feel of rural England, that have been selected with the help of the fashion label’s archive team.

Rosemary Harden, manager of Bath & North East Somerset Council’s Fashion Museum, said: “We are thrilled to be able to stage this exhibition in such a landmark year for both Laura Ashley, and for the museum.

“It has been exciting to work directly with the Archive team at Laura Ashley in London and mid-Wales, and an honour to have the opportunity to display a selection of their iconic dresses alongside examples from the Fashion Museum’s own collection.”

After Bath, the ‘Laura Ashley: The Romantic Heroine’ exhibition will travel to The Bowes Museum in County Durham for its only other UK showing from September 21.