No doubt many Persephone readers have their own personal memories associated with clothes designed by Laura Ashley (1925-85). She was born in Dowlais, Merthyr Tydfil, into a strict Welsh Baptist family, and had various jobs before advising the Women's Institute on quilting, a craft she learned from her Welsh grandmother. Unable to find suitably Victorian fabric designs for her patchwork, in the mid-1950s she began designing her own at 83, Cambridge Street in Pimlico. In 1960, the family moved back to Wales and opened the first Laura Ashley shop in 1961 in Machynlleth selling wares made in Wales.