Sometimes called the “lost department store” of Swinging Sixties London, the iconic Biba dressed a generation of liberated young women and redefined the High Street shopping experience forever.
Humble beginnings
Starting life as a small mail-order business, Barbara Hulanicki’s Biba evolved into a style and retail phenomenon. The daughter of a Polish diplomat, the now 87-year-old Hulanicki moved to London with her family after the second world war. She began her career in fashion in the early 1960s, working as a freelance illustrator after studying at Brighton College of Art. Her husband, Stephen Fitz-Simon, was an advertising executive at the time, and could see that illustration was quickly being eclipsed by creative photography, and that it was time for his preternaturally stylish partner to pivot. He encouraged her to pursue her interest in fashion design instead, and in 1963 the couple launched Biba’s Postal Boutique, named after Hulanicki’s little sister. A mail-order business that produced set runs of stock, it was a low-risk means of testing the popularity of new designs, and the perfect way to test the waters as post-war austerity gradually began to peter out.
Rule Britannia
It has been said that up to the 1950s the French were the fashion rule-makers and the British the rule-takers; but by the 1960s the latter had most definitely become the rulebreakers. In 1955 Mary Quant opened her boutique, Bazaar, on King’s Road, pioneering the miniskirt for girls who had previously dressed as junior versions of their mothers, and Biba was set to take that sense of freedom to whole new levels. However, it was a French girl, Brigitte Bardot, who inspired Hulanicki’s breakthrough design. The designer had seen Bardot in a press photo “wearing pink gingham, very low cut”, and decided the look was just the ticket for the long hot summer of 1964. When her gingham dress with matching headscarf – a veritable ‘steal’ at 25 shillings – was featured in the pages of the Daily Mirror, the newly minted mail order company was deluged with 4,000 orders in 24 hours and literally had to drain the country of supplies of gingham. Biba had officially arrived!
Biba as a movement
And it wasn’t just the clothes, it was the shops. “Biba’s of Kensington Church Street has style and originality,” reported the Guardian in 1967. “The skirts are shorter, the lights are dimmer than anywhere else in London and the clothes cheaper.’” A mix of Art Nouveau decor and rock ’n’ roll decadence, it was more than a retail space — it was the hippest hangout in town. Potted palms and Victorian hat stands dotted the black-and-white tiled floor: the clothes hanging off the hat stands or folded on the former grocer’s shelves. It’s said that the shop assistants were all fun, cool girls you’d want to be friends with – including a 15-year-old Anna Wintour who started her fashion career as a Biba shop girl. The shop sold everything, from lipstick to dog food; had a roof garden; and even had a playground replete with a carousel. Its rainbow-coloured restaurant took 1,200 covers a day. As the post-war austerity began to peter out, and more woman enjoyed independent lives and jobs, the brand’s makeup range became a fashion fix that many women could afford (and also the first ever brand to create a collection specifically for black sin). A smoky kohl eye and bright red lipstick became the brand’s signature look, with striking campaigns featuring the likes of Twiggy further upping the cool factor and each new release an instant must-have.
The rise of Biba
Just a few months later, the pair opened the first Biba boutique in a small former chemist’s shop in Abingdon Road, upgrading to a bigger former grocer’s on Kensington Church Street 18 months later. The black and gold signage they copied from the undertaker opposite became the Biba signature, later enshrined in the Celtic knot logo that added an Art Nouveau twist. Women – mostly under the age of 25 – flocked to Biba to buy Hulanicki’s ‘Mod’ clothes in the murky tones she soon became known for, and whereas fashions of the previous decades had emphasised the bust and hips, Hulanicki’s slimline designs focused on the wearer’s legs. In addition, Biba’s prices were more than affordable for the new generation of cool girls who loved fashion, and loved experimenting with it like never before. Fitz-Simon had worked out that if they kept prices well inside the maximum disposable weekly income of the average London secretary, they could accelerate the rate of repeat purchases. This made it very different from other fashionable London boutiques that catered only for those with money. But it wasn’t only students and young working women that appreciated a well-designed bargain – models, singers and TV faces like Twiggy, Cher and Cilla Black were also loyal Biba customers.
Women – mostly under the age of 25 – flocked to Biba to buy Hulanicki’s ‘Mod’ clothes in the murky tones she soon became known for.
All good things must come to an end
Hulanicki lost outright control of the business in the mid1970s when she and Fitz-Simon sold part of Biba to another UK fashion company, Dorothy Perkins. The good times couldn’t last for ever and, in 1976, the store closed for good. Hulanicki now lives in the US where she works as a retail and design consultant, and right now in London, The Biba Story, 1964-1975 is wowing a whole new audience of fashion and culture fans at the Fashion & Textile Museum until 8 September. The exhibition examines the history of the brand, from the first simple shift dresses to the glamorous wraps, leopard-print coats and feather boas that came to epitomise the Biba look – and became symbolic of the era’s style.
Forty outfits are displayed alongside a selection of Barbara Hulanicki’s unseen fashion illustrations, which show not only the development of the brand and its designs, but Hulanicki’s exceptional talent as a fashion illustrator. The exhibition’s upstairs galleries showcase a selection of the lifestyle products that were on sale, demonstrating how, in just 10 years, Biba had transcended its origins as a mail-order business to become the first lifestyle emporium: a model that, like all of Hulanicki’s inventions, has continued to inspire decades later.
“We were not interested in high society but in real people on the streets,” Hulanicki has said, and while Sixties London would most certainly have swung without Biba, it would have been far less cool.
