My Vintage Laura Ashley Dress Collection | Favourite Cottagecore Dresses

Hi and welcome. So today I wanted to give you a tour of my favourite vintage dresses. Aaron said that I should pick out my five favourites so I couldn't and I picked out about 10 and I also realised that they're all vintage Laura Ashley dresses so I thought maybe we could do a vintage Laura Ashley dress favourites video instead. So I'm going to give you a sneak preview of what we're going to be trying on. This isn't all of them. This is what we're probably going to have time for today but I've got more in the wardrobe. The wardrobe's full of them. I've been collecting them for about three years and most of them are probably from the 70s I'd say. I'll let you know as we go on. I've acquired these from various different places. Ebay, charity shops, flea markets, Facebook marketplace is probably the best one to get them cheapest. Charity shops. They've all got different stories so let's go. I'll show you my favourite. I can't pick a favourite. I'll just show you a good one to begin with. And here we are. Dress number one. So this is either a late 1960s or early 1970s Laura Ashley dress. It was made in Wales and I chose this one because I love the colours. It's probably one of the biggest prints that I have. I prefer to usually have ones with smaller prints but I thought the top was quite unusual. You don't see a lot of the old Laura Ashley dresses with this kind of neckline and buttoning down the middle and it's just really comfortable. I can wear this for a whole day going out taking photos and it doesn't bother me like some of the other ones do. One of the things about vintage Laura Ashley dresses is just because of the time difference the sizes are tiny. So I'd probably wear like a size 8 or size 10 in the modern size but in a vintage Laura Ashley dress I need like a size 12 or a size 14. So it's kind of harder to find ones that fit comfortably and that's where I like this one so much. I also love this detail on the shape on the bottom. I think that's quite sweet and that's quite characteristic of the 60s and 70s Laura Ashley dresses. So that's kind of how you would spot one a lot of the time but like I said the top's a bit unusual and that's why I was drawn to this dress. This one I bought from a vintage seller on eBay and I paid a little bit more than I usually would. I think I paid about £200 for this one but it was a treat to myself after I did a really big job with a big client and this was kind of like my treat so this is a special one to me. I love this one and I wear it quite a lot. One last thing I love about this dress and a lot of the vintage Laura Ashley ones is there's a generous amount of really thick fabric so they're not see-through and they're really swooshy so if you like taking pictures like cottagecore style photos they're brilliant for making a big swoosh and taking photos and the fabric kind of glides quite slowly down. So let's go on to the next dress. So our second dress is a late 1970s vintage Laura Ashley smock and this is a dress that I probably wouldn't really wear much on Instagram so you may not have seen it. Just because it's shorter and it's not very swooshy it's not a good one for taking photos. I just bought it because I love the colour and I don't think you'll be able to see it quite so well on camera but in real life it's a really nice soft pastel colour and it has really tiny details of little I think they're purple roses and some small limey green leaves as well and it's a cord dress so it's quite warm for autumn time which is really handy because I don't have a lot of dresses I can wear in the autumn and this one I actually bought from a vintage seller in France so I think I got it on Etsy and I had to pay quite a lot to ship it and import it but I just fell in love with it and I wanted a smock Laura Ashley dress because I didn't have any that were this cut. Most of the ones I have are really big and floaty and this just felt like it added quite a lot to my collection from a collector's sense rather than like an Instagrammer sense I guess. So yeah this one is very comfy and I guess it looks a bit like a vintage nightdress. It's probably not something that people will find particularly fashionable right now but I really like it so that's dress number two. Dress number three this is a 1970s long cotton Laura Ashley dress and this style I wanted because I think it's quite characteristic of the 1970s Laura Ashley dresses and you see this neckline in a lot of the photos there's a famous photo of her in London I think she might be on a bike and she's got a dress with this kind of cut the bottom like tapers out a bit more slowly than the previous dress so it's another good floaty one for taking photos and there's a really generous amount of fabric and I just love how the fabric is so thick you don't really get that kind of quality on new dresses anymore and this one I bought from an eBay seller again it was quite an expensive one again it was one that I bought for a treat a couple of years ago and I haven't bought any really in the last year because the prices have just gone up a crazy amount so it was something that I could afford to collect a couple of years ago but at the moment I'm slowing down the pace unless I can find them in charity shops basically this one's a little bit small on me so it's not something that I would wear for a whole day but I would certainly wear it to take a photo for Instagram maybe it's one that I just enjoy having in my collection in the wardrobe more than wearing day to day so yeah I think that's all I can say about this one this one was made in Wales as well as most of her early dresses were and when Laura Ashley made dresses in Wales she was quite considerate about the local communities and she opened up her factories in areas of high unemployment or high levels of disability she liked helping people out making sure people were employed which I think is really lovely so thumbs up for the made in Wales vintage Laura Ashley dresses let's go on this is dress number four this is a late 60s or early 70s made in Wales Laura Ashley dress and it's made of the most beautiful corduroy material lovely and thick and warm so this is a dress that I wear a lot in the autumn it's really comfortable it's a little bit tight on the sleeves now just because my body's changed a bit in lockdown but before lockdown this was something I could wear quite comfortably regularly it doesn't have pockets which is a bit of a disappointment considering that a lot of her other dresses have pockets but I can overlook that for how nice it is and I really liked this thick waist tie which pulls it in at the waist and gives it a nice silhouette so I just tie that at the back quite a lot of the dresses that I've got of hers have much smaller waist ties than this one so they'd be like maybe a third of that size maybe even smaller so that was my favorite thing about this dress I don't wear this one so much now that I've got light hair but when I was a brunette this was like one of my favorite things to wear in the autumn maybe it'll return this year who knows so that's dress number four dress number five this is I believe a late 1970s Laura Ashley dress and this one's kind of more in a regency style they're all kind of loosely historical looking but often they're kind of more Victorian in style but this one is more regency and I love the color of this one I don't know if it'll show up again in the video as nice as it is in real life but it's a really lovely like soft minty color with some pink details of flowers and this one's super comfortable and it has the most amazing big pockets as well like very very much appreciate that Laura Ashley put pockets in her dress dresses maybe there's only the one pocket on this one but even so that's better than most modern dresses yeah this one I bought off eBay I think it was a treat after I'd done another big job which is kind of the story for a lot of my favorite ones I think the favorite ones tend to be the ones that I didn't find in charity shops and I sought them out because I really liked the style and I think this one's quite unusual I've never seen another one like this so if you're also interested in vintage Laura Ashley dresses I'd like to know if you have seen one maybe with a different print yeah I don't know if there's anything else to say about this one I like the puffiness of the sleeves and the elasticated bands at the bottom of the sleeves mean that they're quite comfortable for moving around and for changing your body a little bit as well so this one still fits me really nicely which I'm really pleased about because it's definitely a favorite I think we've got time for one more okay I'll pick a special one so dress number six this one is a late 1970s I believe really heavy cotton Laura Ashley dress in her kind of I guess Victoriana style it's got that classic like pleating along the bottom and feathers out there as well and then these buttons on the sleeves so it's quite tight the bottom of the arm and then poofy up here and it's got that kind of classic Laura Ashley lace along the neck line as well and this lace is something that I've seen a lot of modern designers copy into the new like cottagecore trend and I think it was a trend set by Laura Ashley it's something that I always notice anyway in the designs that I like and this dress I never wear because it doesn't fit me great it's a little bit too long but it's brand new so it's in really really nice condition it's really crispy and I just don't want to wash it it's so lovely and I bought this one from Facebook Marketplace for about 30 pounds which is really cheap I think these are normally like 200 250 pounds and it was from someone who had bought it for a wedding in the 1970s I think she's had she had a couple of them and this was the last one she had left I would have got both if I could have done but probably best not to because my wardrobe's a bit full again it's got a really lovely fat waist tie and gives it a nice kind of silhouette shape and I'll show you the back and if I was to wear this this dress more often it would be really good for photos because the fabric at the bottom is absolutely massive and it does a really good swoosh it's just humongous I love this dress I kind of wish that it fit better or that if it wasn't maybe in such good condition I could actually wear it but it's one that I'm just happy to have in my collection yeah so I thought I would show you this is my last one just because I really enjoyed finding it on Facebook and going to Lyme Regis to meet the person and it was quite a good bargain so that will probably be my final choice I wish I could show you more but Aaron said six is enough and I could probably go on all day so I hope you enjoyed this dress tour thanks for watching and I'll see you again in the next video.