iba is frequently mentioned in the same giddy breath as mini-skirts, Mini cars, the Kings Road, the pill and various other London 'happenings' which shall forever define the 1960's as a decade that swung. It was, however, born of humble origins - garments were initially sold cheaply and to many, by mail order in newspapers. But by the early 1970's, Biba - a labour of love, a label, a lifestyle - had reached hitherto unknown heights of sophistication, innovation and retail experimentation, via its legendary Big Biba emporium on Kensington High Street (once hailed in the Sunday Times as 'the most beautiful store in the world'). Biba makes for a true rags to riches story, though one devoid of a happy ending for its creators... fashion can be a very cruel beast.
n 1961, Hulanicki married Fitz-Simon, and several years later he suggested she design a garment to sell by mail order. Biba's Postal Boutique was duly formed and her long evening skirts with draw-string waists sold moderately well in the Daily Express. Other garments followed, with varying degrees of success, until Felicity Green, Fashion Editor of the Daily Mirror, proposed Hulanicki's design something for a reader's offer. The resulting pink gingham dress sold through the paper for 25 shillings, and immediately netted £14,000-worth of orders. And so began Biba proper, despite the business still being run ramshackle-style from the couple's flat. The fashion-influential likes of Ready Steady Go presenter Cathy McGowan, the 'Queen of the Mods', became a huge Biba fan, typifying the sort of young, liberated woman to whom the label appealed. Next came the very first in a series of Biba shops - a near-derelict former chemist on Abingdon Road, Kensington. Here, Hulanicki artfully went against the plastic-fantastic 'youth' ethos of the decade - retaining all the dilapidated, faded character of the premises, and kitting out the interior with navy blue paint, old bronze lamps and an antique Dutch wardrobe. (Her instinctive knack for mixing the best o the past with the shock of the new would prevail through Biba's progression - some three decades before 'eclectic' became a tired aesthetic cliché.) For the first year of the shop's existence, there was not even a sign over the door - word of mouth making 'hard sell' irrelevant. In terms of the Biba palette, again, in high fashion terms, convention was flouted: Colours were often funeral-like - blackish browns, dark prunes, plus rust and blueberry hues. Hulanicki realised, as she wrote in From A to Biba, that they were the 'dull, sad Auntie colours I had despised in my young days. They looked better in England's grey light, almost vibrant against the grey buildings and pavements'. Of a particularly successful brown chalkstripe Biba smock she also noted: 'The morning my father left for the last time he was wearing a brown chalkstripe suit'.
et Hulanicki felt that Biba could become an even bigger phenomena still. She obsessed over the 400,000 square foot, Art Deco Derry and Tom's department store on Kensington High Street. It had long since faded from glory, but was still complete with its romantic rooftop garden (today, this is still in existence and utilised for dining, private parties and promotional events, such as album launches). Following many complex financial twists, turns and near misses, and with the involvement of the Fraser group and Dorothy Perkins, they secured the building for £3.9 million. Literally hundreds of builders duly prepared the space - working to a budget of £1 million - and toiling around the clock for months on end. The former Biba store can, in hindsight, be seen as a dress rehearsal for this ultra-bold venture: Big Biba - the first new department store in the Capital since the second world war. Though it was not so much a mere department store as a kind of spectacular fantasy-land shopping/eating/drinking/hanging out/rooftop garden-perching experience. One entire floor was named the Casbah - filled with Moroccan and Turkish-influenced splendour; there was a Biba food hall; anyone could sit in the windows - traditional displays were banished (which would be deemed commercial suicide in this day and age); penguins and pink flamingos lived on the roof; the Rainbow Room restaurant and concert hall - with its pink marbled floors - served 1,500 meals a day on exquisite black china. Performers whom appeared there ranged from the New York Dolls to The Wombles, from Liberace to The Bay City Rollers, with artist Andrew Logan hosting oppulent fancy dress parties, still talked about to this day.
