In 1964, Polish-born fashion illustrator Barbara Hulanicki opened a small fashion boutique in Kensington's Abingdon Road, and "London's retail landscape changed irrevocably", said the London Evening Standard. Sixty years on, a new exhibition at the city's Fashion & Textile Museum celebrates "the iconic shop's cultural importance".
The shop was called Biba, the nickname of Hulanicki's younger sister Biruta, and the brand was designed to be "affordable and accessible for everyone".
Hulanicki's journey to the heart of the fashion world began with "a short pink gingham shift dress based loosely on the one Brigitte Bardot wore in Saint-Tropez in 1963", said The Guardian. Hulanicki's dress, which opens the new exhibition, cost 25 shillings and "changed the course" of her life, after featuring in a fashion spread in the Mirror newspaper in 1964. "On the same day", 17,000 readers ordered the dress from the mail-order business that she also ran with her husband, Stephen Fitz-Simon.
The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
Barbara Hulanicki opened a bigger Biba shop, on Kensington Church Street, in 1966
Former advertising executive Fitz-Simon is credited with keeping Biba prices low. "He discovered the average secretary took home £10 a week," said The Guardian, and reasoned that "£3 could buy them a new dress in Biba and still leave them with plenty of change for rent and food".
As well as low prices, Biba was different in its décor, which was "like no other, with blacked-out windows, communal changing rooms, and music vibrating against the second-hand furniture", said Vogue.
Building on her commercial success, Hulanicki opened a bigger Biba premises on Kensington Church Street in 1966, before moving to an even larger shop on Kensington High Street in 1969. But it was a 1973 move to a nearby seven-storey art deco building that cemented her "vision of a full lifestyle proposition", said the Standard. Biba's merchandise range expanded to include everything "from bell-sleeve maxidresses and leopard-print swing coats to cans of lobster soup, packs of pin-up playing cards, lampshades and makeup" – a "resolutely modern" approach that was then viewed as radical.
Biba was also ahead of its time in terms of shoppers' in-store experience. The clothes for sale at the "legendary emporium" were "tossed on coat stands and surrounded by dimly lit feathered chandeliers", said The Guardian. Underwear and silk sheets were sold in a "Mistress Room", and the store also housed a restaurant-cum-nightclub with a ceiling "lit with the colours of the rainbow". On the rooftop, "shoppers could sip tea next to pink flamingos perched by a pond".
Singer Cilla Black and broadcaster Cathy McGowan join other customers queuing to get into the then new Biba boutique on Kensington Church Street
Little wonder, said The Guardian, that come Saturdays, the queue for Biba "curved its way along the high street, with customers ranging from teenagers to the Rolling Stones and Twiggy".
The store would "shut its doors for the final time" in 1975, but the brand's popularity has lived on, with fans now flocking to the new retrospective, "The Biba Story, 1964-1975".
The "perfectly preserved miniskirts" and "leopard-print coats" on show are a fashion "time capsule", said the Financial Times. And they also act as a reminder, said the exhibition's curator Martin Pel, that "fashion at low prices does not need to be disposable".
"The Biba Story, 1964-1975" runs until 8 September at the Fashion & Textile Museum
-
10 concert tours to see this fallThe Week Recommends Concert tour season isn't over. Check out these headliners.
-
Giorgio Armani obituary: designer revolutionised the business of fashionIn the Spotlight ‘King Giorgio’ came from humble beginnings to become a titan of the fashion industry and redefine 20th century clothing
-
Video games to curl up with this fall, including Ghost of Yotei and LEGO PartyThe Week Recommends Several highly anticipated video games are coming this fall
-
Rachel Jones: Gated Canyons – ‘riotously colourful’ works from an ‘exhilarating’ painterThe Week Recommends The 34-year-old is the first artist to take over Dulwich Picture Gallery’s main space
-
10 upcoming albums to stream during spooky seasonThe Week Recommends As fall arrives, check out new albums from Taylor Swift, Jeff Tweedy, the Lemonheads and more
-
A Spinal Tap reunion, Thomas Pynchon by way of Paul Thomas Anderson and a harrowing Stephen King adaptation in September moviesthe week recommends This month’s new releases include ‘Spinal Tap II,’ ‘One Battle After Another’ and ‘The Long Walk’
-
Don't fly by the seat of your pants. Do it the healthy way with these airborne tips.The Week Recommends Yes to stretching. Even more yesses to hydration.
-
'The Office' spinoff, a 'Mare of Easttown' follow-up and the Guinness family royalty in September TVthe week recommends This month's new television releases include 'The Paper,' 'Task' and 'House of Guinness'
