FLASHBACK-LAURA ASHLEY-1997

I've always fancied Laura Ashley's Style.  I love her very feminine approach to ladies garments.  At first glance, she may remind us of our own Lilly Pulitzer, but not quite.  While Lilly's style exhibits the Palm Beach Resort look with its burst of colorful floral patterns, Laura exhibits the calm subtlety of the English Countryside.
While cleaning up at my grandmother's home, I stumbled across an old Laura Ashley Catalog, via 1997 and thought I'd share a little of her timeless style.

She was born September 7, 1925 amidst farms and villages in her native Wales.  This no doubt had a major influence in her work.  In her lifetime, her name became synonymous with simple and gracefulness in women fashions.  Her style, which was an influenced by puritan function and Victorian charm, became a favorite amongst a whole generation. "Living quite remotely as I have done," she once said”, I have not been caught up with city influences and we just developed in our own way”. She declared about her success: "It's not really a question of inspiration. What you make as a designer is an expression of yourself. I love music and painting and I prefer life in the country." 

A major influence on her dress designing was her uniform as a Wren in World War II. She would later say, "The uniform was a very good quality navy gabardine and you could press it and wear it with a clean white cotton shirt and collar and tie. There was a nice, cheeky little hat and comfortable black leather shoes."  It was during this time that she met and married Bernard Ashley, an engineer in 1949.

As fate would have it, while working as a secretary and raising her first two children, she undertook some development work for the Women Institute on quilt work. Taking up the craft, she had learned with her grandmother, part-time she designed headscarves, napkins, table-mats, and tea towels, which Bernard printed on a machine he had designed in an attic flat.  The couple had invested £10 in wood for the screen frame, dyes, and a few yards of linen.  Very soon after the Ashley’s scarves became a huge success.   So much so that Bernard quit his job and devoted all his efforts to his wife.

In 1975 Laura turned down the offer of an Order of the British Empire (she was upset Bernard had not been offered one). The addition of a home in France enabled Laura to go back to her roots of fabric design, and the company launched its home furnishings collections.

Laura and Sir Bernard were a great complement to each other - both inside the business, and in their personal life. Laura had four children, and loved family life, but the expansion of the business meant the need for an escape point, and for creativity. They bought a house in France in the early 1970s. Sir Bernard's qualification as a pilot enabled them to keep in touch with family and business.

The Ashley children were all involved with the business. Sir Bernard Ashley was the company chairperson and Laura kept a close eye on fabrics. The astonishing success of what proved to be the ultimate cottage industry, bought the Ashley’s a yacht, a private plane, a French chateau in Picady, a town-house in Brussels, and the villa Contenta in Lyford Cay, New Providence, Bahamas, just purchased for $8.5 million dollars by TJ Maloney.

 Unfortunately, fate would again rear its ironic face again.  In 1985, on her 60th birthday, while she was visiting her children in the UK, Laura fell down the stairs and taken to hospital in Coventry, West Midlands; she died 10 days later of a brain hemorrhage.

 

 

 As you can see by the photos, the style that she created, is not only beautiful but timeless as well.

All photos were taken from Laura Ashley's Spring into Summer Catalog, 1997.  The last two photos were taken from Laura Ashley, USA.

The Preppy Times

JACKIE BOUVIER PICTORIAL

I've been thinking about Jackie O lately.  Maybe it's because I've been noticing the fashion, attitude and lack of grace with today's mainstream.  There seems to be a lack of class with regards to young ladies today.  The flavor of the moment is to dress as scantily as possible.  Leaving nothing to the imagination is the new cool.  I feel a since of loss and a longing for the women that I grew up knowing.  My grandmother is to me the epitome of an era that seems loss to history.  She herself grew up in the time of miss social grace, style and preppy fashion herself, Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis.

Jacqueline Lee Bouvier was born in Southampton, New York, to Wall Street stock broker John Vernou Bouvier III and Janet Norton Lee. Jacqueline had a younger sister, Caroline Lee (known as Lee), born in 1933. Her parents divorced in 1940 and her mother married Standard Oil heir Hugh D. Auchincloss, Jr. in 1942. Through Janet's second marriage, Jacqueline gained a half sister and a half brother, Janet and James Auchincloss.  Her mother's family, the Lees, were mostly of Irish descent, and her father, John Vernou Bouvier III, was descended from French and English people. Michel Bouvier, Jacqueline's great-great-grandfather, was born in France and was a contemporary of Joseph Bonaparte and Stephen Girard. He was a Philadelphia-based cabinetmaker, carpenter, merchant and real estate speculator.  Michel's wife, Louise Vernou was the daughter of John Vernou, a French emigre tobacconist and Elizabeth Clifford Lindsay, an American born woman. Jacqueline's grandfather, John Vernou Bouvier Jr., fashioned a more noble ancestry for his family in his vanity family history book Our Forebears. Recent scholarship and the research done by Jacqueline's cousin, John H. Davis, in his book The Bouviers: Portrait of an American Family, have disproved most of these fantasy lineages.

She spent her early years in New York City and East Hampton, New York at the Bouvier family estate, "Lasata".  Following their parents' divorce, Jacqueline and Lee divided their time between their mother's homes in McLean, Virginia and Newport, Rhode Island and their father's homes in New York City and Long Island. She attended the Chapin School in New York City.
At a very early age she became an enthusiastic equestrienne,[5] and horse-riding would remain a lifelong passion. As a child, she also enjoyed drawing, reading and lacrosse.
Bouvier pursued her secondary education at the Holton-Arms School in Bethesda, Maryland (1942–1944) and Miss Porter's School in Farmington, Connecticut (1944–1947).
When she made her society debut in 1947, Hearst columnist Igor Cassini dubbed her Debutante of the Year.
Bouvier spent her first two years of college at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York, and spent her junior year (1949–1950) in France at the University of Grenoble and the Sorbonne in a program through Smith College.  Upon returning home to the United States, she transferred to George Washington University in Washington, D.C., graduating in 1951 with a bachelor of arts degree in French literature.  Bouvier's college graduation coincided with her sister's high school graduation, and the two spent the summer of 1951 on a trip through Europe. This trip was the subject of Kennedy's only autobiographical book, One Special Summer, which is also the only one of her publications to feature her drawings.
Following her graduation, Bouvier was hired as the Inquiring Photographer for The Washington Times-Herald. The position required her to pose witty questions to individuals chosen at random on the street and take their pictures to be published alongside selected quotations from their responses in the newspaper.

Of course she is best known as the first lady to President Kennedy.  I don't want to bore you anymore.  Jackie is far more loved for her style and grace.  A grace displayed in the legendary way she handled the assassination of her husband John.

I want to now share a pictorial taken from the Kennedy Family Forums of our only royal princess.....Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis, enjoy.

-Posted by O. Cavanaugh