<p>You guys are so funny saving your Laura Ashley dresses! I have ONE saved dress from disco days in the late 70’s and I took it out the other day to show my daughter. She almost fell on the floor laughing and said, “Mom, it says its made of QUIANA!” Oh, well, at the time I thought I looked pretty snazzy!</p>
<p>hey…my wedding dress was of “quiana”… years later, i loaned it out for a church related fashion show…“wedding dresses from the past”…</p>
<p>Oh, I remember quiana! Quite the knit! One of the first nicely woven lycra blends (I do a lot of sewing, sometimes speak in sew-talk)…I haven’t heard that word in years! I will admit I had some myself…</p>
<p>It was hard NOT to wear Quiana back then. Even the nicest boutiques carried some dresses made of it. The colors were nice, anyway. I had my fair share (maybe 8?) bridesmaids dresses made of it, but vowed when it was my turn at the helm to find something else for the “attendants” to wear!</p>
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Oh oh. I was also in London in 1985 and bought Laura Ashley. Some of the dresses I loved. Some went out of style before I got them home.</p>
<p>Laura Ashley closed???</p>
<p>Sadly I no longer have the Laura Ashley dress I bought in London in 1979, but I did save 1) the green velvet LA dress I wore in my sister’s wedding in the late 80s and 2) the matching mother and daughter LA dresses my MIL bought us in the early 90s. I returned the voluminous floral LA dresses I borrowed from a friend when I was pregnant, and thankfully, there are no pictures of me in them!!</p>
<p>I was wearing one of those dresses, 5 months pregnant, walking with D1 in NYC. Someone stopped me to ask me if I would like to be in one of those pregnant magazines (doing some photo shoots). What girl(woman) didn’t have a dream being discovered by a scout to become the next model? Me, I got discovered when I was a size of elephant wearing a Laura Ashley dress. I very politely told the person no, there was no need to have a lasting image of me looking like that.</p>
<p>Joining the club - I bought my Laura Ashley dresses in London in 1981. I remember the big communal dressing room and how I’d never seen so many bodies without tan lines. When I wore one of my very pretty tent-like dresses on a visit to my husband’s grandmother that summer she asked if I had anything to tell her. I didn’t and then, sadly, when I was pregnant the following year the dresses didn’t fit as I got too busty. I really hope I still have them in the back of a closet somewhere.</p>
<p>Never had a LA dress but did have Gunne Sax. Anybody remember those? It was the must-have dress for my 1979 prom. My Mom, an excellent seamstress, spent weeks and weeks making mine fr. a Gunne Sax pattern. It looked exactly like the picture in Seventeen magazine that I was hoping to emulate. There was yards and yards of ribbon and lace on that floral beauty. My Mom is gone now…wish I had kept the dress…I do still have the Prom pics though.</p>
<p>There was another line back then that was popular in NYC…I want to say Catherine mcConnell but that’s not it. They had little collars, then slim fitting to the waist and then sort of billowed out. I remember one Thanksgiving wearing one and my brother calling me Alice In Wonderland! Wish I could remember that name!</p>
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<p>Me too! I bought this long black dress in 1976 for a Fraternity formal and it soon became the “go to” dress among my friends. It was very long (had to be hemmed for me & I’m 5’7’‘), so we hemmed it up and down and it went to dances on girls who were 5’1’’ as well as those who were 5’10’'. I’m sure that dress has some great stories.</p>
<p>My wedding dress was also made of Quiana. Not much else available in a small midwest town in 1980.</p>
<p>GunneSax- that would be the dress I wore to Senior Prom.</p>
<p>Ah, memories.</p>
<p>I wore a Jessica McClintock gunne sax dress for my wedding dress in 1981. Off the rack at Fredrick & Nelson and it was even on sale
not that flattering, but we were going low budget and at $80 it fit .</p>
<p>Laura Ashley, apparently, still sells clothing across the pond:</p>
<p>[Dresses</a> at LAURA ASHLEY](<a href=“Laura Ashley | Elegant Bedding and Wallpaper | Shop Classic Home Decor”>Laura Ashley | Elegant Bedding and Wallpaper | Shop Classic Home Decor)</p>
<p>Is that the style Susan Boyle used to wear?</p>
<p>Wow, Laura Ashley has certainly changed. </p>
<p>Susan Boyle’s original dress was some kind of shiny poly thing–not at all Laura Ashley- like. At least not the older Laura A, which was all cotton and most small sprigged flower prints and the like.</p>
<p>I just remembered being in a friend’s wedding…her mother was determined that we would all wear Laura Ashley, but both of us looked like dumpy milkmaids (not Tess of the D’Urberviilles! <g>) in what was available. In the end, the MOH–her sister–wore the LA outfit her mother insisted on buying, and did indeed look like a milkmaid. The other bridesmaid and I wore wheat-colored linen Calvin Klein skirts with ivory linen blouses. We looked rather good, I must say, and could actually wear the clothes again.</g></p>
<p>In the late 1980s when my kids were very young, I got a part time job at the Laura Ashley store in the local mall. The extra money was good and the discount was great. My daughter was the best-dressed kid in the neighborhood. I still have my favorite Laura Ashley dress, not that I could still fit into it.</p>
<p>dke was it Kathryn Connover? I had several of her dresses in the early 80s. I unearthed one in my closet during the “sweep” this past winter that I kept for some reason unremembered. They were fitted on top with a fullish bottom, some had pleated shouldes, some had lacey collars…</p>
<p>[Kathryn</a> Conover Original Vintage Cotton 70s Dress by VintageLuxury](<a href=“This item is unavailable - Etsy”>This item is unavailable - Etsy)=tags&includes=title</p>
<p>This is a picture of a Kathryn Conover dress. The collars were all different, and the fabrics, but the style was most often the same. I had a red one, a bright blue one and the black on with the lace collar that I had kept for some reason.</p>
<p>Kathryn Connover…that’s the name! I had several of her dresses. Filene’s Basement (the original one in Boston) used to carry them. They were my wardrobe staple when I travelled to trade shows for my job. They fit me well and I always got a lot of compliments on them.</p>
<p>Back in the 70’s everything was made of quiana, I swear. Remember those men’s disco shirts with all those wild prints? I actually have one now that I picked up in a vintage shop. Couldn’t resist.</p>
<p>I love how my mom dresses. Some people would say she dresses “young”, but it’s a good balance of dressing old and young. She’s in her mid-40s btw. She wears leggings and jeans about half the time. Leggings usually with a cute long flowy top. And jeans with a nice t-shirt. If we were the same size I’d definitely borrow some of her clothes. Oh and as for foot wear she usually wears heels or Uggs, we also borrow each others boots (we have brown leather ones and a couple of suede grey/black ones.)</p>
<p>As for the office, she wears suits rarely, usually just flowy skirts with fun designs. She does wear juicy track suits sometimes (well on the weekends), she even has some t-shirts from Victoria’s Secret PINK, ha !</p>