Biba

1. Biba-style makeup: MAC lipstick in Diva, Urban Decay eyeshadows in Vivid and Fetish, Benetint cheek stain from Benefit, Eylure lashes, Barry M Racing Green nail polish.
2. Satin Harlequin jacket from TopShop.
3. TUK platform shoes from Schuh.
4. Vintage Biba.
5. Barbara Hulanicki.

I was nine and a bit of a hick, fresh in the Big Smoke that is London in the summer of ’73. Everything you ever saw in “Velvet Goldmine” was actually true in a small stretch of the capitol – men in eye shadow, peacock feathers; platform shoes the size of skyscrapers and Bowie on the radio. I was captivated.

My mum had just finished a stint at modelling college – I have a very cool mum – and she was on a mission to revamp her wardrobe and her makeup. So like almost every bright young thing in London in the mid-70s, we headed over to Kensington to the old Derry and Tom’s building and through the massive Art Deco doors.

We stepped into Big Biba and I’ve never been the same since.

Photo copyright londonlee.com

Barbara Hulanicki and her husband Stephen Fitz-Simon set up Biba in 1964 initially as a postal order company offering one very famous little sugar pink gingham dress. The demand was so huge that they moved into tiny premises in Abingdon Road and an empire began. Biba was fun, sexy and very affordable – at a time when young girls dressed like their mums and couldn’t afford high fashion.

Makeup followed clothes – brown lipstick and black eye shadow and green nail polish. By 1973, the Biba empire was unstoppable and they opened their lifestyle store before anyone knew what that meant. The department store boasted a food hall, a cinema, a restaurant, a concert venue, clothes, makeup, baby clothes, household goods and a beauty parlour.

Photo copyright Alwyn Turner

Chocolate brown walls and gold detail mixed with Art Deco furniture and pounding glam rock music. The very rich, the very beautiful and the very famous hung out on the window chaise longues, and an air of sheer divine decadence perfumed the air. The New York Dolls played their first gig in the Rainbow Room – attended by the young Adam Ant and Morrissey, both of whom decided to go into music that very night.

A mere year or so later it was all over – strikes, an oil war and a global recession hit businesses hard in the UK and Biba went bust. Barbara and Fitz moved to Brazil and then settled in Miami where Barbara is now a successful interior designer, and generations still hold fond memories and collections of clothes and make up. Many have tried, and failed, to revive the name, not realising that Biba was less about a clothes store and more about an era.

It’s after four
The stars won’t wait
She’s feeling faint
He’s feeling fate
They dream of 1968 and
Biba-Nova

We’re all gonna live forever
Like Biba-Nova
It’s all over

(“Biba Nova” – The Little Ladies)

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