Biba was much more than a department store: it was a cultural phenomenon. Started by
fashion illustrator-turned-designer Barbara Hulanicki and her husband Stephen Fitz-Simon, between 1963 and 1974 Biba rose from cheap and cheerful mail order to become a glamorous multi-storey concept store selling everything from bikinis to baked beans. Anyone with a passing interest in fashion who lived a boa’s-throw from
London during the 1960s has a Biba story. Celebrity customers included Twiggy , Brigitte Bardot , Mia Farrow and Mick Jagger . Here, Yoko Ono bought the suits she wore to perform her Cut Piece (1964) in the
UK. Teenage girls saved up pocket money for bus tickets just to hang out there. It was, rumour has it, a paradise for shoplifters. Biba started as a response to the vast disconnect Hulanicki sensed between the Parisian haute couture designs that dictated seasonal fashions and young women’s real lives. Hulanicki’s first runaway success was a simple gingham frock with a matching headscarf, sold by mail order and promoted through a fashion feature in The Daily Mirror in the spring of 1964. More than 17,000
Women ordered the dress, indicating a huge appetite for chic, affordable, ready to wear clothing. By that autumn, the first physical Biba store had opened in Kensington. Over the following decade, Biba would move into a series of ever-larger premises. The last of these, known as Big Biba, was a seven-storey department store in the former Derry & Toms building on Kensington High Street. (That same building is now home to the i offices.) Biba was fast fashion . In so many ways it set the template for chains like H&M and Topshop. Garments were priced as cheaply as possible and produced in limited numbers, ensuring a rapid turnover of styles, with new looks arriving every week. Hulanicki imagined her core customers to be young working women – she pitched her prices to be affordable to someone on a secretarial wage. Looking back from our own time, when such a wealth of affordable clothing is available on the high street, it is hard to imagine how radical this was. The Biba Story: 1964 – 1975 at the Fashion and Textile Museum is – astonishingly – the first London exhibition dedicated to the brand. But all that vast turnover and hasty production has an impact on the logistics of an exhibition. On the strength of the garments on show here, those low prices were achieved by cutting corners in quality and manufacturing – the clothes were cheap, and they look it. Nevertheless, for those who saved up to buy Biba, the garments were beloved and worn with great pride: much of the clothing that is on show here has lived a rich and full life. Only a handful of garments here were lent by institutions (none, as far as I could see, from the V&A, which holds two dozen Biba dresses ) – I assume much of what is on show has been hanging in closets or in boxes in the attic for 50 years. The state of some are shocking – I can’t recall another fashion exhibition that has included garments pocked with visible moth holes. The Fashion and Textile Museum follows the Biba story chronologically from that famous gingham dress right through to the glamour of Big Biba. Cavils about wonky hems and holes aside, there are some fabulous pieces here. Balloon-sleeved dresses in bold graphic prints, tied at the neck with extravagant pussy bows. A voluminous faux leopard fur coat. A white lace frock worn as a wedding dress in 1969. One gorgeous long-jacketed grey leopard-print trouser suit was owned by Hulanicki herself – it was one of the few Biba garments she hung onto after walking away from the brand in 1974. The Biba look shifted from the short poppy styles of the mid-60s to a more romantic, retro silhouette by the end of the decade. The changing Biba logo and the store designs were increasingly influenced by Art Deco and the flamboyant graphic excesses of the late Victorian decadent Aubrey Beardsley , whose work was shown at the V&A in 1966. Long skirts, billowing sleeves, culottes and flared trousers replaced the high collars and psychedelic graphics of the early years. The shape of the Biba woman, however, remained constant – skinny, long-legged, flat-chested and androgynous – idealising the undernourished proportions of a generation who had grown up under rationing. The scope of Biba’s output also expanded with the brand. From 1967 it offered children’s clothing, placed low so that their youngest customers could have a hand in selecting their own wardrobes. In 1970, the phenomenally successful Biba cosmetics line was launched. Big Biba sold everything from branded tins of soup to bedding. Displayed here, a few shelves of grocery products, including brown glass jars of lentils, bottles of cherry wine and cans of consommé, all decorated with Biba’s black and gold labels, almost steal the show. Who wouldn’t want fully coordinated kitchen shelves, where even the baked beans were chicly dressed? The exhibition texts include some irresistible details. A whole range of Biba party dresses were sold as “dressing gowns” because nightwear was subject to a lower rate of tax than eveningwear. Hulanicki was not only a fashion pioneer, but also a pioneer in maternity provision: in the late 1960s she created one of the first workplace crèches, at Biba’s Church Street store, addressing the needs of her overwhelmingly female workforce. Read Next Why is art about motherhood still taboo? The demise of Biba followed a clash between Hulanicki and the brand’s increasingly incompatible corporate backers. By 1974, 75 per cent of Biba was owned by
British Land. In the summer of that year Hulanicki departed. The following year Biba ceased trading. The Biba story is a compelling chronicle of a transforming city in the post-war years. The brand was emblematic of the youthful pop culture associated with London in the era . I was so excited for this show, and was disappointed to find something so lacklustre and… well… sad. These are difficult times for cultural institutions and I’m aware budgets are tight, but this exhibition was marred by a lack of basic care: stained walls, oily finger marks, exhibits obscured by bad lighting. The Biba exhibition is put to shame by a little one-room show in the same institution which looks at period film and retro fashion in the 1970s. Focusing in particular on Shirley Russell and her designs for (husband) Ken Russell’s fabulously eccentric film The Boy Friend (1971), it includes original costume drawings and memorabilia as well as garments. Packed (perhaps a little too tightly) with interesting details, it illuminates a really fascinated shift in British fashion, as designers started to look back to garments from earlier in the century for inspiration. It is fun and uplifting – sadly not something I could say of the Biba show. I left ear-wormed with tunes from The Boy Friend and a yearning to watch the film again. Biba ’s opening day did offer a rewarding people-watching experience. The exhibition drew in crowds of vintage fashion fans in immaculate outfits, accessorised to the nines and complete with period-perfect lacquered hairdos. I felt bad for them that the loving attention to detail they had put into dressing themselves was not reflected in the show. The Biba Story: 1964 – 1975 is at the Fashion and Textile Museum, London to 8 September