Laura Ashley has relaunched their popular Laura Ashley No. 1 fragrance:
Exclusively designed for Laura Ashley in 1981, to complement the charming floral prints and delicate geometric designs of that era, the original No.1 fragrance has been reinvented for 2012.
Today’s modern interpretation, designed by renowned perfumer, Azzi Glasser, uses the finest ingredients to create an evocative fragrance with top notes of cassis, Victorian plum, violet leaves, marshmallow and green water stem. Heart notes of wild bluebell, purple rose, white gardenia and chamomile provide a beautiful floral scent, whilst base notes of sandalwood, patchouli oil and creamy musk, complement the blend perfectly.
Retaining all the charm of a very floral, fragrant and famous history, the perfume captures the heart of Laura Ashley’s style. The floral bottle replicates perfectly the brand’s identity of bold, beautiful stand-out print, which has defined their place in home decor and fashion as innovative experts, blending old and new to keep their charm.
Laura Ashley No. 1 is available in 30 ($52) and 60 ($68) ml Eau de Parfum, and can be found now at the Laura Ashley US website.
(quote via prweb, hat tip to Fleur!)
My grandmother gave me this fragrance when I was a college student, and I ended up going through multiple bottles. I wonder whether it will really smell the same. Oh, I hope so! Just seeing that bottle makes me feel happy.
Whoops, I missed the part about “modern interpretation.” Why does LA feel the need to be “modern”?!
No kidding! And is “bold” really an accurate description, either?
Well, would be really surprising if you could still make No. 1 today given all the regulatory changes — so it would nearly have to be a modern interpretation. How much they’ve changed it though, I have no idea.
I wish they’d stop using “modern” to describe a fragrance. I don’t know what that is supposed to mean, unless it means “fresh”, another industry term I have come to detest. I have a bottle of LA#1 in the original box, and the bottle even has a glass stopper; I had bought it on eBay in the splash. Every so often I dispense a few precious drops onto my wrists and neck and breathe deeply. From the notes described, I don’t think the “modern” interpretation can even come close. I have to believe it’ll just be another fruit-n-flowers (more fruit than flowers probably) — boo hiss. Although, I really shouldn’t pre-judge. Now I have to find out where it is being sold so I can sniff it. I AM curious, after all!!
Damn, I should have known better than to get excited. Modern interpretation, indeed. Death knell, more like.
Won’ts top me from buying a bottle, which they were smart to not change.
At least…… I hope not?
Should have said above — this has been out since late Nov, although when it got to the US, I have no idea. So there are probably reviews someplace!
I still have the original LA No. 1, which was my special occasion perfume in high school. I fear for the faithfulness of the “reinterpretation,” but will try (and possibly buy) nonetheless. That’s what I call nostrilgia.
LOL!
*clap clap clap*
Nostrilgia© – LIL
Brilliant term! 😀
Okay not about the perfume but Laura Ashley holds very bad feelings for me! Back in 1990 after marrying my husband we went to a summer party for his law firm. ALL the senior partners wives were wearing LA dresses! Every single one of them, like they had a meeting or something 🙂 Needless to say, I was not. I was wearing a lovely vintage summer suit in pale green. I was made to feel like such an outsider and I have hated the LA look ever since. Just looking at that box makes me cringe. Isn’t it funny how things like that linger on in your mind.
A lovely vintage suit in pale green sounds much more stylish than LA dresses worn by the entire herd.
Oh, please try not to still feel that way! You were *THE* standout – People pay stylists big bucks hoping to achieve a fraction of that sort of fashion statement!
Stepford wives, anyone?
This really brings back 80’s memories of a lot of things!
I’m not sure they should use the same bottle if the juice ain’t the same! Not fair to those who don’t follow these blogs, or read the small print.
I wore, and loved, the dresses in the 80’s. They would look like sister-wife chic today, I’m afraid.
Here’s an over-share:
I dated an “old money” guy back in the early 80’s and was invited to a family wedding in Rumson, NJ. I did not fit in on any level, and no one tried to spare my feelings letting me know that.
I went looking for the Ladies and upon opening the door, found a line of LA dresses queued up to hoover blow off the antique mirror. someone. Had wrestled off the wall. Oh my! Those puff-sleeved, busy-printed, bow in the back debs
Part deux… anyway…they knew how to party. But so much for truth in advertising. Then, and now!
The ’80’s gave a whole new meaning to ‘powdering your nose’ !
Waitaminnit. So the Laura-Ashley-clad debs were snorting heroin off the antique mirror?
That’s livin’ large.
Just old school cocaine.
Remember, these were the High. Living. 80s.
It was a wild time w/ few immediate consequences. It was entertaining, but only for a weekend. That innocent little floral bottle brought back some big memories!
Well, I was in college at the time, and Laura Ashley dresses were VERY fashionable. I couldn’t afford them myself, but I sure wore dresses-in-the-style-of, which does seem considerably less ridiculous on young women.
Never saw any cocaine. I don’t say that there wasn’t any, but my school was a drinkin’ school instead – it was perfectly fine to go out and drink your eyes yellow, but the few people who mentioned drugs did so in whispers. I did get offered some pot once. Turned it down.
I remember feeling like I was in a crazy coming-of-age film. I got out of there quickly and back down to the ballroom as the wedding band was a “big band”. Unbelieveable. I am glad that relationship did not workout, or I would be ten years too dead to write this post.
Oh! I have several partial bottles stashed, but they have all gone a bit off. Topnotes are gone, stayingpower not so good, but I love to dig them out and smell them sometimes- out of pure nostalgia. I have to get one of the new ones to compare with.
I still have my bottle of LA1 with about a third left. I’m really hoping to get a chance to compare old with new. The old, to my nose, is very oakmossy. It was very polite and feminine and rather soapy but also very mossy, a bit like Estee Lauder’s Beautiful. (This was before the era of clean.) The new LA1 will not have any oakmoss component, obviously!
I agree it’s a bit rude to produce the new fragrance in the old bottle. A lot of people are going to be disappointed!
I used to like Dilys and wish LA would bring that one back – but only if they don’t tinker with it.
I wore Dilys also and have a little miniature bottle of it. Sadly it is empty. Still have fond memories of the scent.
Modern interpretation= Marshmallow!
Hopefully they’re referring to the plant and not the candy. Otherwise that would be nine kinds of wrong.
Never owned No. 1 but it’s a distant smell-memory of the 80s in my mind’s nose.
Geez, I’ve always loved that darn bottle, but ‘bold’ and ‘modern’ weren’t exactly what LA evoked with their general aesthetics in the past. Despite my kvetching about hackneyed terms, there is no denying I’m curious to sniff and compare! 😉
I have heard so many good things about the original LA no. 1, but I suspect this will probably be nowhere near the same. I actually do own a Laura Ashley dress, but it is not one of the ruffly, floral-printed type. I bought it in the mid-1990s, and it is emerald green velvet, with a scoop neck, princess sleeves, a long, full skirt, and covered buttons down the back and on the ends of the sleeves. It was a challenge to get into it because of the buttons in the back, but it was my all-time favorite dress that I have ever owned, and I got compliments every time I wore it. The only reason I don’t still wear it is that it has “shrunk” several sizes over the years. It’s probably pointless to hang onto it, but I keep thinking that if I ever get back down to the size I was 20 years ago, I will wear it again.
I was perusing prom dresses for my daughter the other day and wondering where “pretty” went. Sure, those 80s puffy sleeves and full skirts were girly-wirly, but they tended to be fairly flattering on a range of body types.
Oops, I meant to say “princess seams”, not sleeves. My dress did not have the puff sleeves, which tend to be unflattering on me as I have rather broad shoulders. I really do not think it is girly at all. There is one just like it up for sale on eBay right now:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Laura-Ashley-Green-Velvet-Elizabethan-Edwardian-Maxi-Long-Party-Dress-Gown-/200874765594#vi-content
Believe me, I would love to be able to wear this dress again.
Wonderful dress! I love that particular shade of green, and that style does not date surely (does it?). You’d have a better chance of getting away with it now than plenty of other styles from 20 years ago. Anyway, never mind about not being able to fit into yours. You have gained in wisdom and life experience …
I don’t believe it, 50 Roses! I too had the most beautiful dress in dark green velvet which I loved so much! It wasn’t LA, but it was gorgeous – it was long, with an empire line, and had white billowy chiffon sleeves, a slashed neckline with the white chiffon making a revere and big collar. It was something I could imagine Lady Caroline Lamb wearing, or Maid Marian in Sherwood Forest. Sadly the closet shrank mine as well. What causes that to happen, I wonder?
There are these little creatures called calories that live in your closet and sew your clothes up a little tighter each night. Or so I have been told.
Smiley face emoticon!
I’d be willing to bet that a lot of people don’t realize that perfumes get reformulated. We do, because we are somewhat serious about our scents, but the average consumer probably isn’t. I know that before I found blogs about perfume back in the days before the Internet, I thought that if a scent I hadn’t smelled in a long time seemed different to me it was because my nose or my memory of the scent had changed. Little did I know the perfume really was different and that my memory was probably accurate. That being said I would like to smell this because I do remember it from the good old days.
I am sure they don’t, and even if they were to ask an SA, they would not be told the truth. I have had SAs swear all up and down that nothing is ever reformulated.
Oh, Poodle, I too was so glad and relieved to discover the world of blogs after years of thinking my nose must have gone off, rather than the perfume had actually been changed. Finally it was my belief that my favourite fragrance had most definitely been altered, and that it was not my faulty sense of smell – and then having the perfume house in question totally deny any reformulation – that led me to trawl the internet for answers – and boy did I get them!
Like 50 Roses says, the SAs all swear till they’re blue in their faces that nothing has changed and that it’s you that’s wrong. But now we all know better!
I suppose Laura Ashley at least admit this is a “reworking”, but I can’t help feeling that the juice probably has no relation to the original, and that they are most definitely cynically trading on our yearning for old times. But I would still like to smell it too.
It’s strange – I almost feel by marshmallow they literally meant marsh mallow, not the sweet. If you look at it from the note list, if they meant the sweet, why not vanilla or something else with it? It just seems glaringly out of place next to the other things.
So, I got my sample of the Laura Ashley No. 1 Redux. The name in connection with the genesis of the juice is Azzi Glasser, who is referred to variously on the LA site as “perfumer” and “designer.”
I didn’t hold out a lot of hope for this one, because (A) the trio of LA perfumes released last year were dull as dishwater, and (2) the whole LA product catalog, including a line of medical scrubs, is a disembodied shadow that has nothing to do with the quirky, archaic, and sentimental designs Mrs. Ashley was known for up until her death in 1985. (My wedding dress, a sort of Edwardian afternoon dress, cotton and lace, suitable for a round of croquet before changing for dinner and much more gracious and genteel than the tarted-up prom dresses brides wear nowadays, was a Laura Ashley design.)
The little card that the vial of perfume was affixed to looks nice, with the same floral design that’s on the bottle. It says “Fabriqué au Royaume Uni,” so that’s nice, but the copy was full of typos in both French and English. The notes include “green water stem,” whatever that is. It was an odd experience when I first put it on. I wore nothing by Laura Ashley No. 1 for most of the 80s and well into the 90s, and this sort of reminded me of that. But it was a vague reminiscence, in the way a somewhat inexperienced drag queen might be vaguely reminiscent of, say, Marlene Dietrich. Which is to say, not very. Then it got a sort of medicinal tinge to it, maybe in keeping with the scrubs product line they’re flogging. Then it got sort of unpleasant, and I applied my Caldrea Sea Salt & Neroli hand lotion, which improved the situation.
I’ll try again tomorrow. I’m not ready to give up yet, but I was happier with the Martecci knockoff I got a few years ago. The Martecci website seems to be having some problems, so that might be a long shot, too. I expect I’ll be going back to my new best friend, Mitsouko.
Thanks so much for letting us know. And sorry!
I meant, of course, “…nothing but Laura Ashley…” in the 80s and 90s, sorry.