the brand that changed British fashion

Amid the recent collapse of British retail institutions, from department-store chains Debenhams and House of Fraser to luxury retailer Matchesfashion, the idea that a fashion boutique could welcome a million visitors per week to its shop seems a distant fantasy.

But such was the phenomenon of Big Biba in 1973, with its 18,500 square meters of retail space over seven stores on London’s Kensington High Street. A grand Art Deco building, originally designed by architect Bernard George for the Derry & Toms department store in the early 1930s, it contained womenswear, menswear and childrenswear from the Biba brand, as well as a restaurant-cum-music venue and a roof garden with flamingos. Think of it as a Biba experience for day and night.

The fantasy was short-lived, however, after Biba’s majority shareholder Dorothy Perkins was bought out by property and investment firm British Land. In came strip lighting and clear signage; gone were more playful aspects — such as the pet food display in the shape of a giant sculpted Great Dane, its belly filled with rows of Biba pet food — as well as Biba founder Barbara Hulanicki.

Hoping to share Biba’s history with a new generation coming The Biba Story, 1964-1975, an exhibition at the Fashion and Textile Museum in London — the brand’s most substantial show to date. It has been curated by Martin Pel, whose goal, he says, is to tell the story of “the world’s first lifestyle brand”.

Featured are original Biba garments from across the label’s lifespan, Biba catalogs art directed by graphic designer John McConnell and featuring photographers Donald Silverstein, Helmut Newton, Sarah Moon and Harri Peccinotti, and branded household items from baked beans to wine.

Hulanicki was born in 1936 in Poland and raised in Palestine, until her diplomat father, involved in mediation during the partition of Palestine, was assassinated. Twelve-year-old Hulanicki moves with her grieving family to Brighton to be taken in by “Auntie” Sophie, a haughty, wealthy widow accustomed to couture and thrice-daily change of wardrobe.

A few years later, and fresh out of art college, Hulanicki was ready to reject the stifling life that her aunt represented. On entering the world of fashion as an illustrator, however, she found more of the same. “I got sent to all these amazing fashion shows like Christian Dior, Givenchy, Balenciaga,” she says over a video call from her adopted home of Miami. “I was bored stiff. It was all for ladies who lunch.”

Hulanicki soon found herself among a postwar generation working and newly independent in London: “They didn’t have their mothers giving them hell about what they were wearing, what length their skirts were, and they were out all night dancing.”

Hulanicki describes her first success in 1964, when Felicity Green of the Daily Mirror invited her to sell a dress in the paper for 25 shillings (about £21 today). The pink gingham shift and matching headscarf, referencing Brigitte Bardot in St Tropez, received more than 17,000 orders, leaving Hulanicki and husband Stephen Fitz-Simon with “sacks of money” but scrabbling to source the fabric.

This dress “kick-started” Biba, launched the previous year in its first iteration as Biba’s Postal Boutique, says Pel, but a fuller vision emerged by September 1964, when Hulanicki and Fitz-Simon opened their first shop in west London. Biba was not just about a radically skinny silhouette, with sleeves slimmed by clever elbow darts; the shop was also about the escapism of Golden Age cinema, rediscovered 1930s fabrics and Victorian bentwood hat stands in lieu of rails.

Shop assistants left customers to rummage freely, and once sofas were installed in the entrance for boyfriends, Biba became a place to be. There was music, energy and sometimes nudity, as customers’ excitement over the clothing outgrew their inhibitions. Celebrity visits were frequent, and the stars were happy to join the fray: a pregnant Barbra Streisand, refusing a private changing room, is just one famous face that Hulanicki recalls, along with Twiggy, Mick Jagger, Brigitte Bardot and Princess Anne.

Big Biba offered a new model of fashion retail by providing a place that catered for the whole family, with entertainment, food and even a crèche for customers, as well as one for staff. It sells not just clothing, but also shoes and cosmetics, furniture and babywear (including chic black nappies), all desirable yet priced for a modest salary. Advertising in the GayNews and having a cosmetics range for black skin were “obvious” decisions, given those who were both working and shopping at Biba, says Hulanicki.

Post-Biba, retailers learn to reach younger generations, leaning into the appetite of this new market and starting to offer more distinctive retail experiences. Milanese company Fiorucci had a different style but similar pace, while Topshop was for many years a British high-street success. “Biba changed the way we all shopped even though we take it for granted now,” says Pel.

Pel is wary that the brand’s vibrant, affordable clothes may be associated with today’s colorful fast-fashion looks: “People like to situation Biba with the idea that it is disposable fashion, [or] certainly fashion that was not [an] investment, but people are still wearing their Biba clothes.”

The exhibition’s two major lenders are former “Biba girls” Sarah McPherson, née Plunkett, Barbara’s first shop manager, and Lilli Anderson. When Pel was selecting items for display, McPherson said to him: “Oh, can you not take that, because I still wear that?”

While the advent of ecommerce has made shopping more convenient, Hulanicki observes that Instagram favors a certain look: “All these designer clothes that you can’t wear. They’re like costumes, with all the bums showing and boobs showing.” But that’s not realistic, which was always a priority for Biba, she says. “It had to be. It had to be sold.”

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