FASHION
Biba was one of the defining style brands of the 1960s. Here, its founder Barbara Hulanicki recalls its iconoclastic spirit
IBEGAN MY CAREER AS AFASHION ILLUSTRATOR – often for Harper’s Bazaar, in fact – which meant I was fully immersed in the world of all the top designers and photographers. But, I think, drawing all that couture made me realise I wanted to create something new for the generation of post-war girls who needed something affordable and more youthful than the style of the time. That was why I started Biba, though the ‘how’ was rather mad. I was friendly with a lot of the editors who knew I loved designing dresses and creating patterns. In 1964, I was asked by the fashion editor of the Daily Mirror if I would make a simple gingham dress for 25 shillings. The idea was that you could order it through the paper in tons of different colours. My husband Fitz helped me with all the requests but it just got out of control. We had about 70,000 orders in the first week. To cope with demand, we found this amazing old shop in Kensing ton that we used as a storeroom. People started turning up just to buy the dress and we started making more pieces. That year, we decided to launch Biba (which was my little sister’s nickname) and that space would become our very first shop.
It was a wonderful time to be in London. It felt as though everyone was coming for the music: the Beatles, the Rolling Stones. We wanted Biba to reflect the feeling of that period, where everyone was just hanging out. That was why we put sofas in the store. Initially, we thought they might appeal to bored boyfriends, but men soon started shopping there too. Paul McCartney and David Bowie would always pick items from the womenswear section, like our big sequin jackets. They were very rock ’n’ roll.
We had exciting people coming in all the time. Twiggy was one of our first customers. She was this gorgeous, skinny little thing, just 15. After she made it, everyone wanted what she was wearing. Brigitte Bardot came all the way from France, and got changed at the back of the store, where all the service men were smoking. Barbra Streisand turned up heavily pregnant. We had to close the store one morning for Princess Anne and I worried we would lose all our cool, but she was fantastic. She was so dry and funny with such remarkable spirit. And once we had to console a weeping Mia Farrow while she was shopping, after she found out Frank Sinatra was ending their marriage. One day it was so packed that Fitz had to work the till. ‘There’s an odd man staring at me,’ he said. ‘Don’t worry, that’s just Mick Jagger,’ I told him.
