Designer. Although Laura Ashley grew up in London, she was born Laura Mountney in Dolwais, Merthyr Tydfil, Wales. Her love for that bucolic region heavily influenced her designs in home fashion and clothing. Ashley began her design career in London, on her kitchen table, where she sketched out designs for wallpaper, headscarves, placemats, and table napkins. Her first shop, specializing in home fashions, opened in Kensington. As her interior designs line became more popular, Ashley‚s focus turned to fashion design. Her romantic, nature-inspired, neo-Victorian clothing became one of the most recognizable design aesthetics of the 1970s and 1980s. Ashley is also known for her impact on the Welsh economy. As her sales boomed, she moved her manufacturing operations from England to her native Wales. Laura Ashley PLC is the most popular brand to ever come out of that country, and her cadre of factories, headquartered in Carno, had a markedly positive impact on a depressed Welsh economy. At the height of brand success, a fleet of factories supplied 5,000 Laura Ashley stores worldwide with clothing and home fashions. In addition, Ashley‚s company is known for being among the first to address the negative impact of manufacturing on the environment and among the first to rely on all-natural materials in the manufacture of clothing. Her designs were markedly anti-mod and anti-minimalist, a sort of counter-reaction to prevailing design aesthetics of the 1960s and early 1970s. On her 60th birthday, Laura Ashley suffered a fall at her daughter‚s home in the Cotswolds, and slipped into a coma. She died a few days thereafter. While still in existence, Laura Ashley PLC has been on shaky, on-again, off-again financial footing since the 1990s.Currently, the Ashley brand includes interior decorative objects, linens, furnishings, fragrance and bath products, and clothing. Bio by  (bio by: Kathy Riley Williams)  Family links:  Spouse:  Bernard Albert Ashley (1926 – 2009)* *Calculated relationship