The rise and fall of BIBA
Created | Updated Aug 5, 2002
In London in the early sixties the fashion scene was beginning to 'swing'. Mary Quant and many others pushed hemlines high. The Kings Road, on a saturday afternoon, was a fashion parade, and the Beatles were wanting to hold your hand from every shop doorway. It is a common misconception that the sea-change in fashion was somehow 'of the people'. It was not quite like that. The new designers were, initially at least, almost as exclusively priced as the old Chanel, Dior etc.. Fine for the Chelsea types, but young women elsewhere were struggling to copy the fashions in their magazines. Very soon throughout the country they were buying their Petticoat, 17 and Honey and doing their best to emulate the fashions therein. The cleverest and most nimble fingers were much in demand among their friends, and it was from this background that Barbara Hulanicki began a small mail-order business, named after her sister Biba
The shops
With the aid of good press coverage1, the mail-order business quickly became a small and chaotic shop in Abingdon Road, Kensington, very quickly followed by a move to Kensington Church Street, just off the busy High Street with its several large department stores. There was a further move into a small shop in the High Street in 1969, followed, in 1973 by the audacious takeover of one of the big, though now rather dilapidated, department stores, Derry and Toms. The refurbishment of this giant store was a marvel in its time, a complete conversion to the Biba look throughout, from the doormats to the roof garden, the toilets to the food shop, and it was more than a little lavish in the 'Art Deco' style of the original store. It will never work, said the wise old men of retailing. They were right. Two years later, the store closed.The Biba Look
Barbara Hulanicki was not part of mainstream fashion. She had little to do with mini-skirts, see-through shirts, geometric designs, bold colours, hipster trousers and all the other hallmarks of what we now think of as 1960's fashion. She was a maverick. She was on her own in Kensington and not in Chelsea or Soho. Her main influences seemed to be the 1920's flappers, Edwardian tassles and shawls, and the dreamy pre-raphaelite painters. Her skirts were long and flowing. Sleeves were long and tight, and materials included velvet and satin. Her colours often black, dark browns, plums, grey and dusky pink. Patterns, when used, were tiny with the emphasis on plain colour. Biba girls were skinny, with big eyes, and hair styles favoured misty curls and not the crops of Vidal Sassoon.In the shops, and then the store, dresses were displayed on bentwood hat and coat stands, draped with scarves, hats and belts. There was much black glass, with gilt and silver fittings. Carpets, where used, were thick and opulent. In the store, the whole style was carried through to cosmetics, furnishings, stationery, men's clothing, bed linen and everything else that the store sold, including baked beans in a black tin with the ubiquitous gold logo. It was a unique and wonderful experiment.
Almost until the end prices were kept reasonably low, at least for women's fashion, and the style varied little through the years, with, perhaps, some concessions to 'glam-rock' at the end.And then it closed
In retrospect the move to the store was too great a jump, and under-capitalised, something of a gamble that the 'Biba Look' would have a big enough fan-base. There were some basic mistakes in the use of space, hatstands not being effective display stands. Only a small proportion of the floor area was given over to sales. A concept that can be made to work now, but didn't then. The new store took Biba away from womens fashion into many many different products where, perhaps, their styling touch was not so sure. It was a true department store. To add to the difficulties, the project was started in an economic upturn, lived its short life in a downturn, and was financed totally with borrowed money.The brand lives on, in cosmetics and jewellry most importantly, and every few years some nostalgic entrepreneur has a go at reviving the Biba Look, buying the copyright on old designs and reproducing some. In spite of periodic re-visits to the sixties and seventies, Biba is somehow missed, having always been, perhaps, a little 'out of the loop'. Those who still have a few Biba bits and pieces should perhaps guard them carefully for their grandchildren and some future Antiques Roadshow'.
Barbara Hulanicki has lived in Miami for some years, and designs the interiors of luxury hotels.
If you are good at chatting up doormen, you can take a lift to the roof garden from an anonymous entrance in Derry Street to the building that was Biba, and is now Gap, Marks and Spencer and the like. If you are wealthy, you can flounce past said doorman and take the lift to the rather nice restaurant above the gardens, and, when you have eaten your fill, from there you may descend to the garden. Either way, as you wander around by the babbling brook and under the full height trees, 6 floors above Kensington High Street, you will come across a pair of real live pink flamingoes. A tiny taste of the constant surprise once offered by Biba.
