Batsheva x Laura Ashley Is Back
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In New York, there’s about a 50 percent chance any baby stroller you see has a baby in it. And if it doesn’t have a baby in it, there’s a 100 percent chance it has something you couldn’t have even imagined. So when designer Batsheva Hay decided to push glowing dry ice in a vintage baby pram stroller down the Upper West Side, while wearing a dress from her most recent Batsheva x Laura Ashley collection, I know no one really batted an eye. If anything, that might have been the most normal non-baby baby stroller sighting some passersby saw that day.
Batsheva's own line started when she decided to remake a vintage Laura Ashley dress, and so it makes sense that she's involved in an ongoing collaboration with the British brand, which is known for making romantic floral dresses not unlike those the Pre-Raphaelites wore. In the '80s and '90s, everyone wanted a Laura Ashley dress. And in 2022, everyone hunts for vintage Laura Ashley dresses at the thrift shop while wearing Batsheva, especially in New York.
“One thing I feel confident about is my New Yorkness. I am a definite New Yorker,” Hay tells me over the phone after sending over a folder of photos from the latest Batsheva x Laura Ashley campaign, in which the glowing baby pram stroller plays a leading role and Hay is the model. All the photos are weird and unexpected and great in the way New Yorkers are. The same can be said of the dresses, with vintage floral prints that are the slightest bit off and frilled Peter Pan collars that are just sweet enough.
People who haven’t been to New York like to say people in New York only wear all black, but in reality, you’ll likely see more girls wearing vintage prairie dresses these days than wearing that so-called “New York uniform."
“This is how I dress in the city, and part of the fun of the city is that you can really throw anything on and it has this life to it,” Hay says. “You can throw these dresses on with a heel or with sneakers or with cat-eye sunglasses or whatever, and you're welcome on the streets.” The irony of dressing like a 19th-century housewife to run up the subway platform to catch the F train and meet your friends for $26 cocktails somewhere is what makes getting dressed in New York so funny. We should probably all be wearing sneakers and sweatpants to get from points A to B with ease, but New York isn’t easy, so why not at least have fun with it? And the Batsheva x Laura Ashley collection is so clearly made for having fun in.
Some fun things Hay demonstrates you can do while wearing her third collection with the storied brand: Light a pan on fire à la Debbie Harry, cover your kitchen cabinets in cake icing, befriend a flock of pigeons, and spill a bright green Jell-O mold all over your wood floors. The prints Hay pulled from the archive for this collection inspired the domesticity theme she wanted to play with. “This woman is mostly home, kind of losing it, unraveling in a way,” Hay says before making sure to clarify. “It’s in a fun way! Maybe she's a woman who doesn't look in the mirror that much, but also kind of has her hair done and sleeps in it and wakes up and just puts on vintage dresses kind of thing.” She’s the type of woman who doesn’t even really need a mirror, because she knows what she likes and how to wear it. That approach was also how Hay went about styling the campaign, which was photographed by her husband, Alexei Hay.
“My husband calls it my Russian roulette styling, where I just find things and go, 'Throw it in!'” She threw in colorful tights from the “old lady lingerie and tight shop” on the Upper West Side and a pair of leather gloves that her mother-in-law gave her. It all just worked.
In large part, that’s because no one gets Laura Ashley like a true Laura Ashley fangirl. “I came into this whole collaboration from a place of real, genuine love for the brand, and it's personal.” It’s so personal, Hay couldn’t have imagined anyone else modeling the winter collection.
“We all know the catalogs, and it's hard for me to picture a model or celebrity that fits that image. It just seems so different. Whereas putting myself seems easier, because I love Laura Ashley. I used to always wear Laura Ashley. It's like the little girl in me is now grown up and reenacting the catalogs.” And it's true: It's hard to imagine anyone else pushing that glowing vintage baby stroller outside of The Dakota uptown but her.
The third Batsheva x Laura Ashley capsule is available online at batsheva.com.
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