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How reassuring to know that in a world that’s all change, the 87-year-old Barbara Hulanicki is still her old subversive, stylish self and that Biba, the iconic fashion emporium and temple to youth culture she founded in 1964, has become a state of mind.
Hulanicki arrives at a London signing and reception for her latest book clad entirely in black, her go-to shade. She’s wearing a Rick Owens leather jacket with tough, pointy shoulders, a Miu Miu crossbody bag, and her fingers are covered in chunky wooden rings she bought online, and then painted herself with black nail polish.
All that black frames her suntanned face (she lives and works in Miami), honey-colored bob, and bags that dangle over big, round sunglasses. Just like Patsy from “Absolutely Fabulous,” she’s still 1960s skinny from all the post-War rationing — and proud of it.
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The Queen of Thin
In the Biba days, she was the queen of thin. The clothing Hulanicki designed for the store had such tight sleeves and high armholes that girls wearing them “couldn’t even open a window,” says Martin Pel, who cowrote the newly-released book “Biba: The Fashion Brand That Defined a Generation,” (Yale University Press) with Hulanicki.
Ahead of the book signing, Hulanicki has her portrait taken in the lush roof gardens of the former building off Kensington High Street that Biba occupied in the early 1970s.
“Make me look thin — or I’ll haunt you,” she tells the photographer with a smile before grabbing a comb from her bag and whipping it through her long bangs.
Guests at the signing and the party that follows include old friends like Twiggy; Mary Austin, Freddie Mercury’s former girlfriend whom Hulanicki hadn’t seen since the mid-1970s; Zandra Rhodes, and the artist Andrew Logan, who designed the original Biba roof garden.
The A-lister nightclub that most recently occupied the gardens is no more, and the refurbished space has been turned into a private members club known as The Roof Gardens. Hulanicki was originally worried about seeing the latest iteration, but thinks the new owners have done a good job.
She says the new green space is “less hippy” than in the Biba days, and some things haven’t changed. She points to the little footbridge, and remembers her then 3-year-old son Witold jumping up and down on it, and also has a story to tell about the long-standing gardener.
“He used to grow pot here,” she says with a big, naughty laugh. “He had a patch over there,” she says, pointing across the vast terrace. “You could just go and knock on his door.”
Ushering in the Swinging ’60s
When Biba opened in 1964, it offered a jolt of color and fashion to a drab London still feeling the after-effects of World War II rationing. It helped to kick in the Swinging ’60s and reached its height on Kensington High Street, with a seven-story store known as Big Biba.
With its blacked-out windows and shopfit created by stage set designers, it was a unique retail concept and world famous.
Biba’s customers included Princess Anne, Twiggy, Brigitte Bardot, Julie Christie and Sonny and Cher. Mick Jagger was a fan of Biba style, and Keith Richards was even known to wear little Biba women’s jackets onstage.
When Big Biba opened in 1973, it had a food hall serving health food and homemade ice cream — both radical offers at the time, and customers could purchase food including baked beans, camembert and fresh fish. It also had a 500-seat restaurant called the Rainbow Room, where the New York Dolls once played. At the time, the roof garden was the largest in Europe.
Downstairs, the racks and shelves overflowed with pussy-bow blouses, piles of platform heels and floppy hats. The store offered everything, including lingerie, cosmetics (Biba sold the first full cosmetic range for Black skin) and home furnishings.
The store even sold diaries that featured recommendations for restaurants, night spots, places to visit and suggestions for how to live the “Biba” lifestyle.
Those diaries were sold earlier this month as part of a wider auction by Kerry Taylor of Biba clothes, accessories, catalogues and ephemera to mark the 60th anniversary of the opening of Biba’s first boutique on 87 Abingdon Road in Kensington.
The book’s release and the auction coincided with the final days of a blockbuster show at London’s Fashion and Textile Museum, which opened earlier this year. “The Biba Story: 1964-1975” looked at the history of Biba in 40 outfits — 10 from each iteration of the London store — and drew on Hulanicki’s private archives, press books, correspondence and marketing material.
Starting as an Illustrator
Hulanicki started her career as an illustrator, and later began selling her designs through catalogues, which she treated like magazines, putting together stylish head-to-toe looks for customers.
Together with her husband, Stephen Fitz-Simon, Hulanicki eventually opened a store — the kind of place where she wanted to shop. It grew quickly — and organically — and it wasn’t long before she was selling her customers a lifestyle.
“You must realize what life was like in those days in England — there was nothing fantastic. The shops were terrible! And we were giving customers things from Paris and Italy. We traveled to all the fairs, and we would look for what was missing in our own lives — lampshades, interiors, food, clothing, shoes,” says Hulanicki from a table on the terrace.
She and Fitz, as she refers to her late husband, would “pop over to Europe,” for trade fairs and to make connections with manufacturers for merchandise ranging from sausages to platform shoes.
“We found a shoe manufacturer on top of a mountain in Bavaria,” says Hulanicki. While hunting for lingerie in Spain, the only viable company she and Fitz could find specialized in stripper outfits. They went for it, later doing a shoot with Twiggy where they scattered the saucy lingerie and platforms, which Hulanicki refers to as “hooker” shoes, on a big round bed.
In addition to finding what she and Fitz needed, Hulanicki says she was also satisfying a new generation of women, who were moving to London for the music, the lifestyle, and the prospect of finding boyfriends. She says they were earning a good income working in typing pools, and they were hungry for fashion.
“They wanted to get away from their mothers, and they wanted to wear nice, [inexpensive] things,” she says. “They’d come in to buy a 3 quid [pound] dress, and as we grew, we gave them more.” Compare that with Mary Quant’s prices, which hovered around 30 pounds.
The girls from the shop doubled as models for the Biba catalogue, and were happy to show customers how to style themselves and get the look. “It was wonderful, like having lots of children,” says Hulanicki of her staff and customers.
The shop assistants, who would often take their babies to work and park them in the dedicated Biba crèche, even chose the bands that played on the shop floor, and in the Rainbow Room.
“The girls would OK the music, and I never interfered,” says Hulanicki, although that’s not entirely true.
A male member of staff made the mistake of suggesting that Elvis perform at the opening of the Rainbow Room. Hulanicki and her mostly female staff immediately vetoed it. “He was too old,” she says of the singer, who was in his late 30s at the time.
Her Interior Design Work
Hulanicki, who turns 88 in December, still has that youth-loving mindset. She’s still working as an interior designer on large-scale projects, planning new professional adventures, and keeping a hawk eye on cultural trends.
Instagram is her lifeline — “I’m hooked on it,” she says. During the interview, she even proffers her opinion on the “broccoli” hair that so many Gen Z boys are loving right now. “It’s a very lovely, clean look, although I don’t know where it comes from. Maybe from the history books?” she asks.
As for her own look, she’s sticking to black. “I have to work with color a lot, so wearing color can be distracting. I need to blank myself out,” says Hulanicki.
Her past projects include the interiors for Ronnie Wood’s Harrington Club in London, and she continues to work with the property developer Chris Blackwell, the founder of Island Records and a worldwide promoter of reggae. Of late she’s been working on a large-scale project recoloring and decorating the facades of Art Deco houses in Miami Beach.
Hulanicki also designs the Hula clothing and accessories collection, which is sold on the tech platform BrandLab360, and says she wants to create more shoes, clothes and handbags. During the interview she scrolls through her sketches of colorful high heels, sneakers and platforms on her smartphone.
Then she makes a reveal. Having left Biba after the company shut in 1975, she’d like to replicate the concept for a new generation.
“We’d start with certain things, and then we’d grow. And I’d appeal to the 40-year-olds, Ladies Who Lunch, anyone who’s in good shape,” she says before greeting the posse of fans, of all ages, ready to buy the book, meet the founder, and get their Biba fix.