London
United Kingdom
Address
30 Hereford Road
London W2 5AJ
UK
FMD-ID
BR374
Phone
+44 207 229 7999 Fax +44 207 229 7990

About

founded by

Barbara Hulancki & Stephen Fitz-Simon

belongs to

BIBA International Ltd

about

Biba was an iconic and popular London fashion store of the 1960s and 1970s. It was started and primarily run by the Polish-born Barbara Hulanicki with help of her husband Stephen Fitz-Simon.

Biba's early years were rather humble with many of the outfits being cheap and available to the public by mail order. Biba’s postal boutique had its first significant success in May 1964 when it offered a pink gingham dress to readers of the Daily Mirror. The dress had celebrity appeal as a similar dress had been worn by Brigitte Bardot. By the morning after the dress was advertised in the Daily Mirror, it had received over 4,000 orders. Ultimately, some 17,000 outfits were sold.

The first store, in Abingdon Road in Kensington, was opened in September 1964.

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The Look

‘The Biba Look’ or 'Dudu Look' was ‘fresh little foals with long legs, bright faces and round dolly eyes.’ Barbara Hulanicki describes her customers as ‘postwar babies who had been deprived of nourishing protein in childhood and grew up into beautiful skinny people: a designer's dream. It didn’t take much for them to look outstanding.’ These women were mostly teenagers or twenty year olds, who wanted to have clothes that looked good on them. All the Biba girls remember how women over thirty years old were considered old in the Biba store, and probably felt isolated as these girls felt in other stores. The employees were from the same demographic; among them at one point was a young Anna Wintour, later editor of Vogue.
The Biba look consisted of what Hulanicki called "Auntie Colours" - Hulanicki described them as ‘look[ing] like a funeral.’ These colours were blackish mulberries, blueberries, rusts and plums.
Biba smocks were uncomfortable and ‘itched’ and stopped women’s arms from bending - something that did not stop customers from buying the clothes, which had become the uniform of the era - with the added bonus of that whatever you bought, you could always get accessories to match. Miniskirts were causing a scene of their own, every week they got shorter ‘I thought surely we couldn’t shorten them any more, but magically there were a few old inches to go’ . Although Mary Quant was the first British designer to show the mini skirt, Biba was responsible for putting it on the high street and as miniskirts were in fashion, everything needed to be associated with them.

Who Wears It

Brigitte Bardot, Bianca Jagger, Raquel Welch, Twiggy, Yoko Ono, Anita Pallenberg

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