1960s-1970s From A To Biba And Back Again

[SomethingElse]

1968 - 70. Jacket: lamé and mixed fibres. This jacket with zip detail is constructed from modern materials but the cut retains nostalgic elements. Biba was important in leading the trend for exaggerated retro styles that came to dominate youth fashion in the 1970s. The excesses of glam rock have also been traced back to Biba's version of 'camp'.

vam.ac.uk

 

[SomethingElse]

Vogue May 1967.

More at the source: thebibaexperience.com

 

[SomethingElse]

Trouser suit, 1971-1978.

museumoflondon.org.uk

 

[jennifer~]

1960s red cotton bucket style hat with a round brim by Biba. This hat is printed with scattered art deco style yellow, white and blue letters. Size and Measurements Size Large Notes This hat is in perfect condition Fabric 100% Cotton

1960s bucket style rain hat with a round brim by Biba. This navy blue cotton hat is printed with an abstract art deco style red and brown print. Size and Measurements Size Small Notes This hat is in perfect condition Fabric 100% Cotton

1960s soft cotton maxi dress by Biba in a pretty pink floral print on a cream background. The dress has an empire line with a long sash from the front that folds up over the bust and ties at the back into a beautiful long bow. It features a concealed back zip and has short puffed sleeves. Size and Measurements Size 6 Waist to Hem Length 104cm Centre Back Length 137cm Notes There is slight staining to the front of the dress Fabric 100% Cotton

1960s Biba blouse in a sunflower yellow cheesecloth fabric. The blouse is very fitted, with large collars and lots of small buttons down the centre front. It features half-length sleeves and a patch pocket on the left chest. Size and Measurements Size 6 Notes This blouse is in perfect condition Fabric 100% Cotton

all, topshop.com

 

[jennifer~]

1960s Biba suit in a black and gold lurex stripe. The suit is comprised of a cropped bolero style jacket and a very short, fitted miniskirt. The long sleeved bolero jacket features an oversized double button fastening at the front and button detail at the cuffs. It is fully lined throughout and is a truly iconic piece. It was featured in the book The Biba Experience by Alwyn W Turner Size and Measurements Size 4 (will fit a 6 with a narrow waist!) Waist to Hem on Skirt 39cm Notes The hook and eye needs re-stitching on the skirt and the seam has come undone slightly on one cuff of the jacket Fabric 95% Acetate, 5% Metal

Long length cardigan in a shimmering lilac lurex thread by Biba. The cardigan has long sleeves and features a concealed pocket on each front side. It buttons at the front hip with fabric-covered buttons. Size and Measurements Size 14 Notes There are a few little pulls in the fabric due to age Fabric Metallic Knitted Jersey

Black crepe skirt by Biba in an incredibly flattering bias cut. The skirt features a hook and eye and button fastening at the waistband and falls just below the knee. Size and Measurements Size 6 Waist to Hem 83.5cm Notes The hook and eye needs re-stitching and there is a tiny burn mark on the back of the skirt. Fabric Moss Crepe

all, topshop.com

 

[jennifer~]

Sat 4 Sep 2004

Models wearing Biba clothing. Picture: Antique Collectors' Club
Material girls

Jackie McGlone
MY FIRST Biba dress cost about 15p in 1964. You could buy the pink-and-white gingham original for 25s - £1.25 - by mail-order from a newspaper, but I didn’t have that sort of pocket money back then. What I did have, though, was my Auntie Betty, who copied the cool dress, with its dangerously short skirt, keyhole back and handkerchief headscarf, from a yard of lavender-and-white check cotton off a stall on Carlisle market.
I wore my "Biba" with pride, a heavy fringe, kohl-rimmed eyes and chalk-white lips. It was the first of many Biba rip-offs that my giddy aunt whipped up for me throughout the 1960s. Every Friday evening, I would sit glued to her grainy black-and-white TV set making careful sketches of the glossy-haired presenter Cathy ("Queen of the Mods") McGowan’s hip clothes on the rock music show Ready, Steady, Go! The weekend would start here, because on Saturday mornings my aunt and I would shop for 36 inches of material - I weighed a waif-like six stone - and come Saturday evening I had yet another Biba fake, skinny-fit, with high narrow shoulders and tight-fitting sleeves.
Today, I don’t own a single one of Betty’s "Bibas", although there were dozens of them in maroons and purples, pinks and browns, navy blues and greys. Just like the originals, they were meant to be worn and thrown away, however beautifully she ran them up on her battered old Singer sewing machine. When I graduated to the label itself I was the most "with it" junior reporter ever to chase a fire engine around the north of England in a purple velvet trouser suit and dusky pink suede boots. Those boots! I go all misty-eyed at the thought of them - such "fab gear"!
How archaic all that Swinging Sixties language sounds now - and what a shock it is to discover that Biba’s 40th anniversary approaches. Worse still, imagine my distress on finding that had I hung on to my real Bibas - all those stripey little cotton-knit jersey mini-dresses, with the pull-on jellybag hats, the sexy cut-away flower print frocks, the feather boas, and the velvet maxi-coat - I would be sitting on a nice little earner today. And why, oh why didn’t I keep all those pairs of thigh-high, platform-stacked boots?
Collectors of vintage dress are apparently paying small fortunes for the label, which is rapidly becoming as desirable as early Ossie Clark and Vivienne Westwood from the 1960s and 1970s, according to Alwyn W Turner, the author of a sumptuous and carefully-researched new book, Biba: The Biba Experience. It marks the 40th anniversary of the first Biba shop and is based on the largest collection of the label in the world, put together since the 1980s by Pari, a former singer who acquired a taste for decadent style when she grew up above her aunt’s striptease nightclub in Berlin.
Since reading Turner’s book, I’ve rummaged in wardrobes, cupboards and trunks and all I’ve managed to unearth is a silver jacket from the early 1970s and two badges: one bearing the famous gold-on-black logo, an Art Nouveau take on Celtic knotwork; the other featuring an Art Deco-style dancing couple doing a Fred and Ginger. They will be preserved for posterity. After all, Sotheby’s recently sold a Biba skirt suit with matching hat for £540; a printed trouser suit for £240; and a pair of knee-high boots were hammered at £200.
More spectacular pieces, such as those bias-cut satin evening gowns that look as if they might have stepped out of a painting by Tamara de Lempicka, can reach four figures. Smaller items and separates can be found for £50-£100, although it’s the ephemera, such as the lipsticks and eye shadows in characteristic moody Biba colours - dark brown and mulberry, mahogany and sooty black - that continues to embody the original Biba ethos of the Swinging Sixties: quality design and chic style for everyone, from working-class girls like me to Brigitte Bardot, Twiggy to Yoko Ono, and Cilla Black to - bizarrely - Princess Anne.
Biba was also a Mecca for the beautiful people. The pop aristocracy - Mick and Marianne, Mick and Bianca, Sonny and Cher, David Bowie and Angie, Terence Stamp and Julie Christie - hung out at Biba. Indeed, Christie wore only Biba in the 1965 film, Darling, while Raquel Welch once went into the shop and demanded that an assistant remove her pink mini-dress immediately so that she could buy it.
Few names are more evocative of that much-mythologised era than that of Biba."It’s a four-letter word that spells success," said Barbara Hulanicki, who revolutionised the way teenagers looked when she and her ad-man husband, the late Stephen Fitz-Simon (known as Fitz), invented the Biba retail empire 40 years ago.
In the 12 years of its existence, Biba produced everything from clothes to food (empty Biba baked bean tins make £10 each nowadays), shoes to children’s clothes, lingerie to wallpaper and china. And all of it came from the head of one woman - a slender blonde who invented a brand name that fulfilled the rock’n’roll promise to live fast, die young and leave a beautiful corpse.
Born in Poland in 1936, Hulanicki created a shop, a look and an attitude towards style that have made her name synonymous with the 1960s. The daughter of a Polish diplomat, she grew up in Palestine, after being baptised in Bethlehem. Her father was abducted and murdered by Zionist terrorists in 1948 and the Hulanickis fled into exile in England, where she fell under the spell of her mother’s Aunt Sophie, an imposing, rich widow who sounded like Marlene Dietrich and whose glamorous wardrobe and jewellery had remained unchanged since the 1930s. She lived in the Metropole Hotel in Brighton and changed her clothes three times a day.
At Brighton School of Art, Hulanicki studied fashion illustration and became a fashion artist for newspapers and magazines such as Vogue and Tatler. Her career as a dress designer began with that cheap mail-order frock for the Daily Mirror. It sold 17,000 units and Biba - named for Hulanicki’s younger sister, Biruta - was born. Immediately, Hulanicki and Fitz launched their own mail-order fashion business: cheap and cheerful clothes that were featured in teen magazines such as Honey.
She recalled years later: "The market was eager and responsive. I had been illustrating the couture collections for women who lunch, the over-30s, which was then supposed to be the prime time for women. There was nothing available that I wanted to wear... there was nothing for the girl in the street." Or as the writer Maureen Cleave so neatly put it: "We were all lamb dressed as mutton in those days."
But teenagers were the new consumers - they had more money to spend than ever before, although there were not enough distinctive things on which to spend it. The Mods - one of the first youth sub-cultures to be defined in the 1960s - used to line up in London’s Strand outside the Lyceum and Hulanicki watched them. She saw that style was coming from the street and not from the perfumed ateliers of snobbish couturiers.
The success of her mail-order business encouraged Hulanicki to open the first Biba boutique, in 1964, in Abingdon Road, London. It was in a "marvellously dilapidated old chemist’s shop that remained unchanged from the outside". Entering this alluring space was like walking into an Eastern souk, where the clothes were all hung on bentwood hat stands and the walls were painted dark navy-blue. The windows were blacked-out and the atmosphere was conspiratorial and crowded, full of mystery and dark promise - and the first communal changing rooms. The designer John McConnell, who came up with the distinctive Biba logo, remembers it as "a boudoir, a girls’ place of secret passion and secret events".
Boutiques such as Mary Quant’s upmarket Bazaar favoured hard-edged modernism, but Hulanicki drew on the fin-de-siecle excesses of Art Nouveau and her ultra-trendy clothes were connected to the murky interior by their drama and playfulness and, above all, by Hulanicki’s extraordinary palette of colours - browns and maroons, mixed with prune, orchid, amethyst and "dirty" pastels. These dark, sludgy colours had an enormous influence on all aspects of 1960s living, from interiors to clothes to cosmetics.
Within a couple of years , Biba had moved to larger premises in a former grocery shop, the Home & Colonial, on Kensington Church Street. Then Time magazine declared London was "Swinging" in its famous 1966 cover story anointing the capital as the city of the decade: "As for the girls, the most In shop for gear is Biba’s boutique in Kensington, which is a must scene for the switched-on dolly-bird at least twice a week."
In 1968, Hulanicki produced another mail-order catalogue. Even the long, narrow shape of it was original. I remember tearing open the envelope containing the first one - then waiting on tenterhooks for the honey-coloured linen waistcoat and skirt (£3 19s 6d) and the juggler-sleeved polka-dot blouse (£2 17s 6d) modelled by Madeleine Smith. As for the grey corduroy trench coat - far-out! The lettering and colours were all in the Biba house style, designed by McConnell, and the glamorous, side-lit photographs by David Silverstein, Hans Feurer, Helmut Newton and Sarah Moon, juxtaposed the Biba image of innocence and knowingness.
The models’ features were exaggerated, their eyes shadowed, their cheekbones hollowed in sepia powder, and their lips stained brown and luscious as chocolate-coated cherries. Their hair was big, all pre-Raphaelite curls. This look, together with the innovative cut of the clothes, changed the female silhouette and even the posture and pose of those who wore the clothes. Hulanicki was adamant about cut. She said: "They were cut like couture. Cutting was really essential for the look; I was obsessed with armholes and looking thin."
Indeed, the journalist Emma Soames recalls Biba’s minuscule sizes with some horror. "She is a heroine in so many ways but I suspect she may also single-handedly have invented anorexia. I spent most of my teens saving up to have a rib removed." And, of course, the stick insect-thin Twiggy bought her clothes there.
By 1970, Biba had its own cosmetics range, heavily influenced by the silent film stars of the 1930s. Within three years, the cosmetics were selling in 15 countries. In 1973, the fourth and final Biba - Big Biba - opened in the Art Deco department store, Derry & Toms, in Kensington High Street. Here Hulanicki sold a lifestyle and an attitude that was absolutely individualistic and very much a reflection of her personal taste for retrophilia.
"It was Harrods on drugs," says Emma Soames. The seven floors were pumped through with rock music. There were no window displays, just sofas where your boyfriend could lounge among the aspidistras while you shopped until you dropped for everything for yourself, your man, your babies - the nappies were brown and yellow, peach and lavender.
The store had an all-black interior and walking through it was rather like being on an ocean liner in the 1930s or on the set of an early Noel Coward play. Hulanicki’s love of Art Nouveau and Art Deco, Hollywood glamour, and dark colours and slinky materials (such as crepe de chine and polished satin) were apparent everywhere. The furnishings, menswear, make-up and women’s clothes sold at Biba had the same feel as a 1930s’ Dietrich film: decadent, camp and unreal.
The success of the store was instant. Tourists flooded in and so did the shoplifters. In the Roof Garden there were pink flamingos and in the Rainbow Room you could sip cocktails and on a good night there might be a live performance by the likes of the New York Dolls or the Manhattan Transfer. It was not so much a department store as a siren’s theme park devoted to wasted elegance and divine decadence. I used to love the sales girls with their green hair, green nails and green lips - so Sally Bowles in Cabaret.
The tide, however, was turning. Big Biba opened just before the combined onslaught of the OPEC oil crisis and the miners’ strike brought Britain hurtling into the gloom and doom of the three-day week. Hulanicki and Fitz had sold 75 per cent of the company’s shares to Dorothy Perkins, which had then been bought up by the property group, British Land. The property crash of 1974 hit British Land hard and, needing to dispose of some assets, it headed for the old Derry & Toms building. The escapist world of Biba was hugely popular but not yet generating sufficient sales, and the times were far from amicable to its sense of fantasy. Biba was about to crash and burn - and in September 1975 it closed its doors for the last time.
"It really is the end of a dream," noted Tony Benn in his diary in 1975, before glorying in "the final fling for the excrescences of Sixties’ fashion". Others took less pleasure in the death of Biba, although in the new age of insecurity, one thing was certain: the unacceptable face of capitalism wasn’t wearing Biba eye-shadow.
And what of Barbara Hulanicki, she of the blonde bob and the permanently arched, pencilled eyebrows, forever smoking a cigarette in a holder? Her genius for transformation goes on. In 1987, Ron Wood of the Rolling Stones asked her to design his bar, Woody’s On the Beach, in Miami. Suitably impressed, Chris Blackwell - the founder of Island Records - invited her to work on his growing chain of hotels in the South Beach area, from where there was no stopping her. She went on to revamp a clutch of world-famous luxury hotels and beach resorts and has become a hugely successful award-winning designer in another world, even designing the interior of Gloria and Emilio Estefan’s personal recording studios.
Nonetheless, the inspiration of a sophisticated business built by one woman, without benefit of focus groups or market research, continues to fire the imaginations of many who weren’t even born when Biba died.
"For far too long ," Hulanicki once said in the glory years, "British girls had to suppress their natural instincts and hide in clothes chosen by their mothers. Now at last, they are free." That sense of freedom and of self-expression remains the lasting legacy of the Biba experience.
Biba: The Biba Experience, by Alwyn W Turner, Antique Collectors’ Club, £35. Phone 01394 389950 or visit www.antique-acc.com. Visit www.bibacollection.com for information on Pari’s collection.

scotsman.com

 

[jennifer~]

Some wonderful old posters

ebay.com

 

[SomethingElse]

I absolutely adore the tapestry coat. B)

Tapestry weave maxi waistcoat mid 1970s together with a black corduroy maxi evening coat with toggles and frogging to fasten.

kerrytaylorauctions.com

 

[SomethingElse]

Biba clothing, late 1960s, eight pieces including black jersey mini dress; brown and black striped knit dress; a brown striped fake fur coat and an assortment of knitwear and blouses.

kerrytaylorauctions.com

 

[SomethingElse]

Knitted fawn wool jacket and pair of culottes, 1970s, woven label together with an orange and black floral knitted tunic top and matching flared trousers and a gold lurex striped full-length evening gown with printed label crossover bodice.

kerrytaylorauctions.com

 

[SomethingElse]

Biba printed cotton day dress 1970s printed label with overall pink and yellow art deco print on a navy ground together with a minute pair of Biba tangerine cotton hotpants and matching vest woven label; a brown and white floral knitted waistcoat and two floral printed cotton bias-cut skirts with woven labels.

kerrytaylorauctions.com

 

[SomethingElse]

Chocolate brown faux fur evening coat, woven label, with deep collar three buttons, maxi length.

kerrytaylorauctions.com

 

[SomethingElse]

Black knitted jersey evening ensemble, late 1960s-early 1970s, printed satin label, comprising full length gown with shoe-string straps edged in copper sequins, the matching jacket with sequin trimmed lappels and cuffs.

kerrytaylorauctions.com

 

[emma peel]

wow that lame blazer in post 21 is off the hook!

 

[SomethingElse]

^

A group of Biba garments, late 60s-early 70s, all labelled, comprising black plush mock astrakhan double breasted coat; brown and white polka dot crepe dress; and a camel jersey bomber jacket bodice.

kerrytaylorauctions.com

 

[SomethingElse]

1969 Lace, rayon, taffeta, lace. Full-length red lace dress by Biba. Lace machine knitted to incorporate the Biba logo, cut into 7 panels and attached to yoke at back and front just above the bust. Dress lined with beige taffeta below the yoke; close-fitting, flowing out approx. 30 cm at the hem. Centre back zip fastening, tight-fitting inset sleeves with no cuff. No label. Worn to Oxford Ball (BNC) June 1969 and to first Law Society Dinner.

This figure-hugging evening gown in rust-coloured rayon machine-lace evokes the glamorous, bias-cut dresses of the 1930s. Biba was wildly successful by 1969, and perhaps in recognition of this popularity, the lace fabric is composed of a repeating pattern of scrolling, art nouveau-style Biba logos.

Polish-born Barbara Hulanicki and her husband launched a home-based mail order boutique in 1963 and a year later opened the first Biba shop in the London borough of Kensington. Drawing on art nouveau, art deco and 1930s Hollywood influences, Biba quickly became known for its affordable, stylish and easily identifiable clothing which appealed equally to working teenagers, housewives, socialites or media celebrities. Biba's stage-like shop interiors, characterised by subdued lighting and a dramatic black and violet colour scheme, added to the label's image of re-vamped Hollywood chic. Dramatically extravagant, the store's success was relatively short-lived, peaking in the early 1970s when it overstretched itself financially by taking over the huge Derry & Toms building on Kensington High Street. Only a couple of years later in 1975, the whole Biba empire collapsed into bankruptcy.

This figure-hugging evening gown in rust-coloured rayon machine-lace evokes the glamorous, bias-cut dresses of the 1930s. Biba was wildly successful by 1969, and perhaps in recognition of this popularity, the lace fabric is composed of a repeating pattern of scrolling, art nouveau-style Biba logos.

Polish-born Barbara Hulanicki and her husband launched a home-based mail order boutique in 1963 and a year later opened the first Biba shop in the London borough of Kensington. Drawing on art nouveau, art deco and 1930s Hollywood influences, Biba quickly became known for its affordable, stylish and easily identifiable clothing which appealed equally to working teenagers, housewives, socialites or media celebrities. Biba's stage-like shop interiors, characterised by subdued lighting and a dramatic black and violet colour scheme, added to the label's image of re-vamped Hollywood chic. Dramatically extravagant, the store's success was relatively short-lived, peaking in the early 1970s when it overstretched itself financially by taking over the huge Derry & Toms building on Kensington High Street. Only a couple of years later in 1975, the whole Biba empire collapsed into bankruptcy.

manchestergalleries.org

 

[aliciamichelle]

Does anyone have the Biba article in British Vogue September 2004 with Kate Moss on the cover? It includes articles written by Twiggy, Penelope Tree, Felicity Green, Jan de Villeneuve, Alexandra Shulman, etc.