The Laura Ashley brand, founded in the frugal 50s, saw its floral, Victorian-inspired designs go global in the 1970s. This programme, filmed in 1976 at the peak of the brand’s success, includes extensive interviews with the designer Laura Ashley and her husband and business partner Bernard as they visit their new shop in Paris, select patterns and talk through designs. Home videos of the family and footage from a football match between the ‘factory girls’ and ‘shop girls’ reveal a lighter side to the business.

Despite its title, the film opens with Bernard Ashley’s thoughts: “I thought tea towels were very degrading. So I put my wife’s name on the bottom...the trouble was the tea towels went much better than anything else so we had to stick to Laura Ashley ever since.” But it’s clear that Laura was the creative driving force behind the eponymous brand, a quietly determined businesswoman whose ideas and decisions kept the tills ringing.

This programme was re-broadcast following Laura Ashley’s unexpected death after a fall in September 1985.