‘I’m terribly worried about Catherine [Middleton], is she okay? It’s a little scary. The whole royal thing could rock. You don’t realize how important it all is until you live in America,” said 87-year-old Barbara Hulanicki, who wants updates on all things Britain before she leaves her Miami home to return to London. ‘I’ve always loved the Evening standard. It was so fantastic. So fast, in and out,” she says, coming up for air between deliciously evil chuckles.
The fashion empress started her illustrious career at the Evening standard in 1955, when I won the swimwear design competition at the age of 19. “I got a phone call and they said, we want to let you know that you won the competition. I almost died. If you’ve ever won anything, you’re so shocked. You go eat a big cake.’ Almost 70 years later and her career has brought her here again ES magazinethis time on the eve of a major retrospective in honor of Hulanicki’s greatest achievement: Biba.
Hailed by the press as ‘the most beautiful store in the world’, Biba was much more than a fashion brand. It was a sublime hurricane that lasted just over a decade, but forever changed the way England dressed, shopped and consumed fashion. What started as a postal boutique in 1963 had by the early 1970s become Kensington’s alternative palace: a seven-storey emporium of peach mirrors, black glass worktops, animal-print walls and ostrich feathers. Biba was England’s It girl empire, where rock stars, acting royalty (and actual royalty) spent their free time.
‘It was heaven. No big security guys or anyone asking, ‘Can I help you?’, just Julie Christie lying in the window,” says Delisia Price, who modeled and worked at the store, which at the time was located on Kensington Church Street from 1968 moved. curator Martin Pel believes Biba was a response to Hulanicki’s traumatic childhood. “I think it was Barbara’s way of creating a world where she was in control.” Biba was something she wanted to create and being a part of that was very much her thing.”
‘Biba was Barbara’s way of creating a world where she was in control’
Martijn Pel
Hulanicki was born in Poland but grew up in Jerusalem. Her father was murdered by an extremist Zionist group when she was only twelve. The last time she saw him, he was wearing a brown pinstripe suit, an outfit that would later reappear in Biba’s workplace. From Palestine, her family moved to Brighton and later to London, where she met her husband Stephen Fitz-Simon – or Fitz – an advertising executive who handled the store’s logistics. ‘Barbara is not an ordinary person. She is an exceptional person. She grew up in Palestine, knew all these amazing cities and had the most beautiful vision,” Price says.
Today, Hulanicki is as exceptional as ever. She laughs phonetically – ‘woo hoo hoo! Woohoohoo!’ – and ends her most scandalous stories with a sharp “hello!” as if to say can you believe it? For example: ‘The girls came down the street like this huge army, and in that army were Brigitte Bardot and Barbra Streisand! Hello!’
Biba injected color into gray, post-war Britain. Opened the same year, 1964, so did Alice Pollock’s Quorum boutique, which soon after began stocking the designs of then recent RCA graduate Ossie Clark. The bohemian boutique Granny Takes a Trip opened in 1966 and soon followed the likes of Zandra Rhodes and Bill Gibb. London fashion was booming and Biba was the well-oiled hinge of 1960s swing.
Biba’s cheap price tags separated him from other designers. It was a meeting between high fashion and high street, and therefore accessible to the masses. Whether you were there to shop, linger outside on the sidewalk or lounge on the couches, everyone wanted a piece – including celebrities.
‘One day Fitz was at the cash register taking the money. He looked nervous and said, “Who is that man standing behind me breathing down my neck? I think he’s a gangster!” I said, “No, it’s fine, that’s Mick Jagger watching you count the money!” It was crazy. Mick Jagger was terribly concerned with money and numbers and so on. It was so funny, golly,” Hulanicki recalled.
Lilli Anderson worked at Biba from 1972 and was the last to leave when it closed in 1975. She applied for a job at Biba after seeing an advertisement in the Evening Standard, but was initially rejected because it was too short – ‘That never put me off though. I went for it again, but this time I wore high platform shoes and got the job.’
She remembers being on the work floor when Diana Ross walked in early one morning. ‘She came to the home department with this belt and asked what I thought of it. She put it on and it fell to the floor because she was so skinny. I was quite surprised, but she bought it anyway. It looked great, but a bit big!’
Anderson’s favorite memory is about a little-known band: “I called Robert Plant to tell him his lampshades were in, but I had to speak to everyone at Led Zeppelin before I could speak to him. It was clearly a big party.’
‘I called Robert Plant to tell him his lampshades had arrived, but I had to speak to everyone at Led Zeppelin before I could speak to him’
Lilli Anderson
Among the likes of David Bowie, Princess Anne, Twiggy, Rod Stewart, Roxy Music and the Stones, one star was there long before she became famous. A young Anna Wintour was hired as a shop girl with some help from the store Evening standard editor at the time, her father, Charles Wintour. Does Hulanicki remember her? ‘Be careful!’ she warns me, cackling. “I’m worried about your future!”
Musicians visited the store hoping to pick up girls (who worked for Freddie Mercury, who married Biba girl Mary Austin), and ended up with their own concert space on the fifth floor. At Big Biba in Kensington High Street, each floor had a different purpose. In the basement you’ll find the grocery section, including surreal displays of giant Heinz baked beans and a towering Great Dane (Othello, a model of Hulanicki’s own dog) to promote dog food. The ground floor was intended for make-up, shoes, accessories and ‘things you would quickly buy’. The first floor was women’s clothing; the second was children’s clothing; the third menswear (as well as the very cleverly placed ‘Mistress Room’ which sells lingerie); the fourth was housekeeping; and the fifth was the Rainbow Room, a restaurant serving classic British dishes named for its swirling, colorful ceiling.
The roof garden became known for its flamingos, and once also for its penguins. “For the opening, Barbara wanted penguins,” Anderson explains. ‘They came from London Zoo. It was amazing to see a penguin up close so I went up to see them. When I came back downstairs, everyone who was having lunch stopped and looked around. I thought, “What’s going on?”, and I looked back and the penguins had all followed me. I think it’s because I was wearing a black pantsuit.’
Those responsible for transforming the store into the paradise it became were designers Steven Thomas and Tim Whitmore. ‘The meticulous layout and polishing of the cosmetics was carried out by Tim at 5am one morning!’ recalls Thomas, who revisited their work through the pages of the newly reissued book Welcome to Big Biba: in the most beautiful store in the worldwhich coincides with the new exhibition.
At its peak, Biba was one of the most visited tourist attractions in London. But in 1975, after the miners’ strike, the three-day working week and plummeting real estate prices, Biba was forced to close. “When the store closed, my husband went in and bought the Biba heads. We were devastated,” said Annie Harker, a fan and collector since she was a schoolgirl. “When we separated, my husband took one head and I took the other.”
“It was Freddie Mercury who told us, ‘Place a preservation order on the roof garden,’ and we did that.”
Lilli Anderson
‘It was horrible. Heartbreaking.’ says Anderson. ‘They didn’t want that store to be a success, they wanted to turn it into a Hilton hotel and tear it down completely. We didn’t know how to stop it, but it was Freddie Mercury who told us, ‘Put a protective order on the roof garden,’ and we did, and they were never able to tear it down.”
Biba may be gone, but the building, its impact and the memories remain. ‘Everything happened by chance in Biba. It happened and so you understood it quickly,” Hulanicki said. “You had to look very carefully so you didn’t miss it.” As Delisia Price said, “There will never be another Biba.”
The Biba Story, 1964-1975 can be seen from March 22 to September 8 in the Fashion and Textile Museum (fashiontextilemuseum.org). ‘Welcome to Big Biba’ (£22; ACC Art Books) is available now.