Biba
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| Private | |
| Industry | Fashion |
| Fate | closed by the British Land Company |
| Founded | August 1964 (first store opens) |
| Founder | Barbara Hulanicki, Stephen Fitz-Simon. |
| Defunct | 1975 |
| Headquarters | Kensington, London, UK |
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Key people
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Barbara Hulanicki, Stephen Fitz-Simon |
Biba was a London fashion store of the 1960s and 1970s. Biba 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 with a hole cut out of the back of the neck with a matching triangular kerchief 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, over 4,000 orders had been received. Ultimately, some 17,000 outfits were sold.
Hulanicki worked as a fashion illustrator after studying at Brighton Art College in the late 1950s. She married advertising executive Stephen Fitz-Simon and they soon opened a mail order clothing company that she named Biba's Postal Boutique. Biba was the nickname of her younger sister Biruta.
The first store, in Abingdon Road in Kensington, was opened in September 1964.
Hulanicki’s first encounter with her new customers was at 10 o’clock on the Saturday morning it opened; "...the curtains were drawn across the window… the shop was packed with girls trying on the same brown pinstripe dress in concentrated silence. Not one asked if there were any other styles or sizes," Hulanicki remarked.
The brown pinstripe dresses were being stored in the shop because Hulanicki’s apartment was overflowing with boxes of clothes for their mail order service. Fitz-Simon dropped Hulanicki at the shop and went to pick up more dresses, Hulanicki went to the bathroom and when she came back the shop was packed. "The louder the music played the faster the girls moved and more people appeared in the shop. I had sold every dress by 11." After the last dress had been sold, people were still lining up inside waiting for the next delivery.
The shops' main appeal was what was seen on TV on Friday night could now be bought on Saturday and worn that night. As the Biba style (tight cut skinny sleeves, earthy colours) and logo became more and more recognisable, the more and more people wanted to be seen in it.
The second store at 19-21 Kensington Church Street opened in 1965 and a series of mail-order catalogues followed in 1968, which allowed customers to buy Biba style without having to come to London.
The next move, in 1969, was to Kensington High Street, into a store which previously sold carpet. Again, it was unique; a mix of Art Nouveau decor and Rock and Roll decadence. On May 1, 1971, a bomb was set off inside the store by The Angry Brigade. They claimed responsibility for it in Communique 8, which was published in IT magazine. The incident is also referred to in Retro - the culture of revival by Elizabeth E. Guffey (Reaktion Books, 2006).
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Wikipedia