Caroline Roux: Miami nice | Life and style | The Guardian Life and style Miami nice Biba brought floppy hats and feather boas to 1960s London. On the eve of the iconic label's relaunch, Caroline Roux talks to its founder, Barbara Hulanicki, in Florida Friday 28 July 2006 19.06 EDT First published on Friday 28 July 2006 19.06 EDT Share on Messenger Close The first time I speak to Barbara Hulanicki, the woman who started the famous Biba fashion emporium in London in 1964, she's standing outside her Miami home and I'm on the phone in London. "We've had a storm warning," she's saying. "But we have so many, you never know whether or not to take it seriously. We have until 4pm to get off the islands which make up the city." Are you insured? I ask. "There's no point," says Hulanicki. "The building is concrete. We're meant to have water and batteries and dry food, too." And do you? "Do I? No!" she laughs.

Shortly after I put down the phone, Hurricane Wilma swept through the city. Now, nine months on, Hulanicki has just put her house back in order. Her windows were demolished and the palm trees in her garden uprooted. "First all the electrics went, and then I noticed that the terrazzo floor was really shiny - it's usually matt," says the woman who has forged an impressive career as an interior designer since arriving in Miami in 1991. Others have not been so lucky getting their homes repaired. Work is done slowly here, where the heat often tips 100 degrees and the humidity is stifling. "You can't even recognise some streets now that the trees have all gone. But, I have to say, it's very exciting." Hulanicki will be 70 in December, but seems in no need of a quiet life - you are unlikely to meet anyone else of her age with quite so much energy. She was born in Poland in 1936 and brought up in Palestine until the age of 12, which the family left in a hurry when her father, a diplomat, was assassinated.

With her mother and two sisters, she decamped to London where her Aunt Sophie lived at the Ritz, never emerging before 1pm to exercise her Pekinese in the hotel corridors. They moved to Brighton (Aunt Sophie to the Metropole), where Barbara endured family life until financial independence allowed her to escape. "It was claustrophobic," says Hulanicki now. "Sophie was so sad we were living in the 1950s and not the 1930s. My friends were having a whale of a time and I had to go skating in a floor-length sable coat with sandwiches wrapped in damask napkins." This retro life, however, was to bear fruit. Biba's identity was forged around a peculiar 60s take on 30s style, from its elaborate gold artnouveau logo on a black background, to the sequined skull caps, bow lips, skinny silhouette and feather boas that made up the Biba look. Hulanicki left London after 12 years of Biba, which had been a critical if not always a financial success, producing not just cutting-edge clothes but everything from Bibabranded baked beans to make-up.

An ungainly sell-out to the Dorothy Perkins chain had finally driven away her and husband Stephen Fitz- Simon. She still regrets that she no longer owns the name (it was bought out some time ago by a businessman called Michael Pearce), particularly with Biba relaunching in September at stores such as Selfridges and Liberty in London, with Bella Freud at the creative helm. "Biba was my sister's nickname," she says. "Feminine but not girlie. It's horrible that it belongs to someone else." Part of what makes Miami, where she lives just one block from the ocean, so attractive is its distance from London. "Delving into the past is so depressing," she says, when we meet in London. She also enjoys the fact that no one has heard of Biba in Florida. To the Miami-ites and Bermudans who are Hulanicki's clients, she is a fearless interior designer, known for "going into funny old houses and making them work" in a place where the normal response is to tear them down. Her own apartment was once the lobby of a Jewish retirement home. She moved in eight years ago after her beloved "Fitz" died and she was fighting ovarian cancer.

"I didn't want to die in the apartment we'd shared," she says of the man whose name still makes her eyes mist. The couple have a son, Witold, who is a yoga teacher living in New York. With its pale walls and light-filled rooms, the new home is a long way from the dimly lit, dark, featherstrewn decor for which the Biba store was so famous. Instead it offers a taste of several more contemporary interior design projects Hulanicki has overseen. There's a chair upholstered in AstroTurf from a scheme she completed for Gloria Estefan 10 years ago. (Estefan, a regular client, took her on tour after her cancer recovery.) There are Lucite (acrylic) tables dotted around from the suite at the Kent Hotel, Miami, that she kitted out for owner Chris Blackwell (the Island Records supremo) in 2001. ("Very popular with rappers," she smiles.) A rejected metal bed recalls the second phase of her designs for the Marlin, another Blackwell job also in Miami. "I'd describe the style of my home as elastic," she says. "It rather depends what job I'm doing at the time.

But I do like to keep a favourite piece from each one." Then there are the layers of thriftshop finds: original Miami Deco silver armchairs, Ethiopian crucifixes, and others from Nicaragua that are studded with Coke bottle tops. There's an unruly collection of Indian goddess dolls and a collection of spiky orange vases. "I started collecting Haitian sequined flags, too," says Hulanicki, "but then I got spooked and rolled them up and gave them away. You're not quite sure if they do really have powers." Hulanicki is currently working on several private homes in Miami and Bermuda. Then there are the 60 homes in Jamaica that have recently been added to Blackwell's Goldeneye holiday resort, the former home of Ian Fleming, for which she is designing the interiors. With her trademark icy blond bob and prescription dark glasses, which she's worn since the 1960s, Hulanicki is curiously vintage and yet bang up-to-date at the same time. She's just moved to a larger office, and her will to work and travel is tireless: "That's why I've always cut my hair myself.

So I can get it right wherever I go." Viva Biba: The iconic fashion label's founder Barbara Hulanicki tells her extraordinary story | Daily Mail Online Viva Biba: The iconic fashion label's founder Barbara Hulanicki tells her extraordinary story Fifty years ago, the first Biba shop opened in London and started a fashion revolution. Here Barbara Hulanicki, the woman behind the legend, tells her extraordinary story A Biba 'op art' piece is modelled outside the original Biba store in Abingdon Road, Kensington, 1965 I was born in Warsaw in 1936, but my parents then relocated to Jerusalem where my sisters were born – Beatrice in 1938 and Biruta, nicknamed Biba, in 1942. From an early age, clothes were more than a mere necessity for me. I must have been such a pain for my mother because I didn’t want to wear the same clothes as my sisters. Barbara today I hated those great pouffy knickers which felt like a balloon underneath our smock dresses. We all had to wear matching clothes.

I rebelled and refused to have the same red shoes my sisters had, so my poor mother had to find me others. It was tough in Jerusalem because there weren’t many shops. My mother used to make aftershave for my father, her own witch-hazel tonic and face creams because you couldn’t buy anything. You had to make or sew everything and my mother was amazing, forever making clothes and stuff for the home. My father’s work with the British Mandate for Palestine [the British ruled Palestine from 1917-48] meant that he could travel and shop abroad. He would go to places such as Beirut and my mother would beg him to bring her something – Lebanon had fantastic French clothes because of the French occupation. I remember he once brought her back a two-piece bathing suit which was knitted. We used to rent a house on Lake Tiberias [the Sea of Galilee] and she went swimming there and couldn’t get out because it had stretched when it got wet!

Barbara with her beach design in the Evening Standard, 1955 Cilla Black and Cathy McGowan help out Our life in Jerusalem came to an abrupt end in February 1948 when my father was taken from the family home. His body was found the following day, his hands tied and a bullet through his temple. He had been murdered with the Polish journalist Stefan Arnold by the paramilitary group Lehi, also known as the Stern Gang, who violently opposed the British presence in Jerusalem and its supporters. Barbara with her father Witold and sister Beatrice (left), 1940 The last days of the British Mandate, which ended on 14 May 1948, saw Palestine, and particularly Jerusalem, fall into a state of lawlessness as conflicting factions sought to take control of the region. It is unlikely that the truth of my father’s death will ever be known. But it now seems that he was a casualty of the Cold War, as militants aligned themselves with the anti-British, Soviet-led Communist regime in Poland, for my father’s name was at the top of the list of those to be assassinated by the new Communist Polish government.

My mother was in a terrible state, and terrified about the future there with three young children. Thank God the British government was so kind to her. They looked after her and put us on a plane to England with the troops, and within a fortnight we had relocated to Brighton under the apparent benevolence of my mother’s widowed and childless half-sister, Sophie Gassner. Aunt Sophie had been left her husband’s fortune, made in the cotton industry, on his death five years earlier. Her halcyon days had been in the 1930s with an endless stream of cocktail parties, couture outfits and planning for the summer season. Couturiers Jeanne Lanvin, Jean Patou and Coco Chanel created outfits for her, which she complemented with a collection of furs and jewels. It was an era she decided not to leave, dressing daily in her silk crepe and satin gowns. Pinstripe trouser suit, 1964 - 'This was one of the first designs we worked on. It was deeply personal for me because the last time I saw my father, he was wearing a pinstripe suit.

When Cathy McGowan [presenter of pop music tv show Ready Steady Go!] first wore a trouser suit to the Savoy Hotel in 1965 she was thrown out. It was all over the papers. Our trouser suit, which sold for seven guineas, was our first notable success in terms of sales' Aunt Sophie saved my family from an uncertain future, but the price was subservience: all decisions were made and paid for by her. I lost myself in the films of Hollywood, with stars such as Greta Garbo, Grace Kelly and Audrey Hepburn, to escape from the loss of my father and my domineering aunt, imagining a more independent life for myself. 'I think there should be a plaque on 87 Abingdon Road. Biba transformed the way the ordinary girl in the street dressed. It was a tiny corner shop, an old chemist in a quiet residential street. But before long, Biba was messca to everyone from shop girls to debs.

Not only did the clothes look amazing, you could afford to buy something every week.' - Twiggy, from Twiggy in Black and White, 1997 In the 1950s, buying affordable and fashionable clothes became a preoccupation. Making up garments from paper patterns was one option, although not always that successful because I got bored. My mother couldn’t stand seeing these half-made things so she would have to finish them off and I remember forever saying, ‘No Mama, make it tighter!’ Aunt Sophie wanted me to go to university but I ignored her wishes and went to Brighton College of Art instead. I remember entering a fashion contest run by the Evening Standard with a panel of four judges including Norman Hartnell, couturier to my aunt. She told me to submit a design for a fussy day dress. But I also entered a design for an Italian-style beach outfit in candy-coloured cotton with a white eton collar. I imagined Audrey Hepburn wearing it in Sabrina. My design won the beachwear section of the competition and Aunt Sophie was not pleased. I remember there was this stony silence as she regained her composure.

Twiggy in a leopard-print coat, 1973 - 'I love this photo because so few were taken in the Big Biba shop. We made this coat for Twiggy. She was very special to us, and it was never work with her, just fun. We did a three-quarter-length version without a hood, which was a huge seller, too. I think I've still got one in London. It's too hot to wear in Miami, where I live now' Norman Hartnell’s couture house made up each of the winning designs and I went with my aunt to his Bruton Street salon in Mayfair to be presented with the outfit. That was my first introduction to the world of couture and it was a great shock: for in the hands of a couturier my soft cotton outfit became a silk taffeta confection more suited to a cocktail party than a beach holiday – but of course they wouldn’t have used cotton, it was much too downmarket.

Winning that competition gave me the confidence to leave art college before the course was over and start work as an illustrator in London, and it was there, in the late 1950s, that I met my husband Stephen Fitz-Simon, who was working in advertising. He was the person who really encouraged me to start designing. He could see that photography was coming in and about to take over from illustration, which would put me out of a job, so in 1963 we launched a fashion mail-order company together. Mail order grew at an unprecedented rate during the 1960s, outstripping all other forms of retailing, and for a small company like ours it was the most economical way to operate. Riding mac, 1968 - 'This was inspired by Burberry and it kept selling out. We stocked it for nine years, and you'd think that after all that time there'd be no problems, but one delivery arrived with a sticky-out dart at the top of the sleeve - I nearly had heart failure. It didn't look right, but sold all the same.

When we took some designs to New York, a large department store liked the mac with the strange darts so much that they bought it! They thought it was classic Biba' I didn’t want my own name associated with it. I wanted people to focus on the concept of our company – inexpensive fashion for everyone – rather than a personality. We decided on Biba, my little sister’s nickname. It was feminine and unusual, a name people could bring their own ideas to. By the spring of 1964 we were struggling to fulfil the huge number of orders we were receiving for our first big hit – a pink gingham dress [see page 65]. So on 5 September 1964, we opened the doors to our first shop at 87 Abingdon Road in Kensington, and without advertising or even a sign on the door, we sold out the stock on the first day. This is an edited extract from The Biba Years 1963-1975 by Barbara Hulanicki and Martin Pel, to be published by V&A Publications on 5 September, Biba’s 50th anniversary, at £35*.

Barbara has also launched a new online T-shirt collection iconclub.co.uk *To order a copy with free p&p, contact the you bookshop, you-bookshop.co.uk . FROM A TO BIBA 1963 Barbara Hulanicki and Stephen Fitz-Simon launch Biba as a mail-order fashion company for young women, enabling them to buy clothes that until then could only be found in London. 1964 The first Biba shop opens at 87 Abingdon Road in Kensington, London, selling cool, sexy, low-priced, high-fashion clothes and accessories. 1966 Biba moves to 19-21 Kensington Church Street and becomes a mecca for anyone wanting to experience Swinging London – Brigitte Bardot, Mia Farrow and her then husband Frank Sinatra visit. 1969 The first Biba department store opens at 120 Kensington High Street, expanding into menswear, make-up, jewellery, paint, cushions, fringed lampshades and satin sheets.

1973 Big Biba opens at 99-117 Kensington High Street in the old Derry & Toms store; seven storeys including a roof garden, restaurant/music venue and food hall. A million people visited every week – David Bowie and Marc Bolan were regulars. 1975 The end of Biba was as spectacular as its rise, with the company faltering and failing within in the space of months when Barbara lost control of it to British Land, one of the largest property development and investment companies in the UK. 1976-2006 Barbara Hulanicki, Queen of Fast Fashion - The Daily Beast SWINGING Barbara Hulanicki, Queen of Fast Fashion The Biba look was the quintessential fashion look of the ’60s, and its owner a style trailblazer who created the first modern, mass-market fashion brand. Lizzie Crocker 10.15.14 9:45 AM ET Picture a tall, leggy woman strutting the streets of London in a silk catsuit and ostrich feather boa, her kohl-rimmed eyes peeking out beneath an enormous floppy hat.

This is the Biba girl, the brainchild of legendary designer Barbara Hulanicki, whose affordable and edgy fashion brand embodied the Swinging Sixties. And her enormously popular Kensington shop, now largely forgotten outside the fashion world, set the stage for today’s boutique shopping experience. There has been something of a Biba renaissance in recent years. Hulanicki was the subject of a 2009 documentary, Beyond Biba , based on her 2007 autobiography From A to Biba . And now, for the 50th anniversary of the infamous ‘60s label, comes The Biba Years: 1963 – 1975 , a new coffee table book celebrating the designer’s transformative brand on its 50th anniversary. The Polish-born Hulanicki spent much of her childhood in Jerusalem, coming to Britain after her father Witold Hulanicki, the Polish Consul General in Palestine, was assassinated in 1948 just months before the formation of the Israeli state.

The family moved to London to live with her mother’s very wealthy, very stylish half-sister, Sophie Gassner, who looked after 12-year-old Hulanicki and her two sisters. “She introduced me to a new lifestyle which was very Victorian and very stuffy,” the 77-year-old Hulanicki says of her status-obsessed aunt, gasping theatrically. “Oh my goodness me, was she stylish.” Speaking by phone from her home in Miami, Hulanicki has a warm, warbling voice—part Greta Garbo, part Julia Child—and a baritone laugh. “It was heavy fashion, all about diamonds and pearls and beautiful clothes—all very serious,” she recalls, giggling at the word “serious.” Years later, Hulanicki would recreate the boas, silks, and sequined skull caps, all inspired by Aunt Sophie’s au courant 1930s aesthetic. “It was everything that I hated at the time!

But then of course it seeped through my pores years later, and I made fake versions of everything she wore for Biba.” In her early 20s, Hulanicki found work as a fashion illustrator for The London Times, working her way up from “making tea to going to all of the shows in Paris and then doing newspaper editorials.” The shows were much less glamorous back then, she says, describing them as “dressmakers’ shows for older women” when compared to today’s runway scene which is “more like showbiz.” In 1961, Hulanicki married Stephen “Fitz” Fitz-Simon, a young British businessman whom she met at a party in London. “The minute we met we just got on like a house on fire,” she says. “We were both kind of rebels, I suppose.” Two years after marrying, Hulanicki and Fitz set up Biba’s Postal Boutique, a mail order label for young women desperate to liven up their drab, post-war closets. But it was Fitz’s background in advertising that transformed Biba from a mail-order success into a retailing phenomenon.

The Biba brand exploded in 1964 with the phenomenal success of a pink and white gingham frock called “the Barbara.” After it was featured in The Daily Mirror, Biba moved 17,000 of them at 25 shillings each (about $36 today). “That gave us a huge entree into manufacturing in London,” says Hulanicki. “All of the Greeks wanted to know about us.” Hulanicki and Fitz used the money to open a boutique in an abandoned chemist’s shop on Abingdon Road in Kensington. “I was really into lovely old premises that hadn’t been tampered with. And this one was absolutely beautiful with all of these arch windows and original peeling paint outside.” After the drabness of the 1950s, her clothes were chic and slightly transgressive, but not haute couture. “They were for the girl in the street,” says Hulanicki.

“They earned 9 pounds a week and would spend 3 pounds on a bedsitter [apartment], 3 pounds on food, and 3 pounds in Biba.” Hulanicki says the decorative arts strongly influenced her designs—“all of those pre-Raphaelite paintings”—and even the black and gold chemist bottles from the Abingdon store, which became the official colors of Biba. Hulanicki hired shopgirls who embodied the Biba brand: modish, thin, and flat-chested, with large, doll-like eyes and an air of insouciance. “I looked for brains and beauty and spunk,” she says. (Anna Wintour, editor-in-chief of American Vogue, once worked there.) And the girls attracted as many visitors to the store as the clothes. “The rock stars would all come in to see them,” says Hulanicki. Members of The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, and The Kinks frequently dropped in.

“The girls were so blasé about the men who came in to flirt with them—I mean genuinely blasé.” She remembers one employee blithely describing some “old man” who was stalking the store one day: the swarthy Italian actor and “La Dolce Vita” star Marcello Mastrianni. “Barbra Streisand was pregnant when she came in and went into the communal changing room, though we offered her something private. It was very democratic.” Get The Beast In Your Inbox! Daily DigestStart and finish your day with the top stories from The Daily Beast. Cheat SheetA speedy, smart summary of all the news you need to know (and nothing you don't). Barbara Hulanicki - Fashion Designer Encyclopedia - clothing, century, women, dress, style, new, body, footwear Barbara Hulanicki - Fashion Designer Encyclopedia Barbara Hulanicki - Fashion Designer Encyclopedia British designer Born: Warsaw, Poland, 8 December 1936; raised in Palestine, immigrated to England in 1948. Education: Studied fashion and fashion illustration at Brighton College, 1954-56; winner in the Evening Standard Design Competition, beachwear division, 1955.

Family: Married Stephen Fitz-Simon, 1961 (deceased); children: Witwold.

Career: Illustrator for Helen Jardine Artists, London, circa 1956-59; freelance fashion illustrator, 1961-64; opened Biba's Postal Boutique, 1963; established first Biba emporium, Abingdon Road, London, 1964; moved and expanded to Church Street, London, 1965; opened branch location in Brighton, 1966; launched mail order catalogue, 1968; moved Biba to High Street, Kensington, London, 1969; introduced line of Biba cosmetics, 1969; cosmetics distributed nationally through Dorothy Perkins shops, 1969; introduced line of footwear, 1969; majority stake in company sold to consortium of investors, 1969; Biba boutique established at Bergdorf Goodman, New York, 1970; purchased Derry and Toms Department Store for "Big Biba," 1972; control of firm passed to British Land, 1972; Big Biba opened, 1973 (closed, 1975); firm declared bankruptcy, 19

76; designed in Brazil, 1976-80; relocated to Miami Beach, Florida, 1987; designer of hotel and club interiors, videos, ready-to-wear children's clothes, theatre costumes, from 1988.

Exhibitions: Retrospective, Newarke Houses Museum, Leicester, England, 1993. Awards: Bath Museum of Costume Dress of the Year award, 1972; Miami Design Preservation League award, for her redesign of the Marlin Hotel, Miami, Florida. Address: 1300 Collins Avenue, Suite 205, Miami Beach, FL 35139, USA. Publications From A to Biba, London, 1983. Disgrace, London, 1990. Articles "The Dedicated Modeller of Fashion," in the Times (London), 15August 1983. "When Big Becomes Beautiful," in the Times (London), 16 August 1983. "The Shattering of a Dream," in the Times (London), 17 August 1983. On HULANICKI: Books Bernard, Barbara, Fashion in the Sixties, London, 1978.

Harris, Jennifer, Sarah Hyde, and Greg Smith, 1966 and All That: Design and the Consumer in Britain, 1960-1969, London, 1986. Whiteley, Nigel, Pop Design: Modernism to Mod, London, 1987. Loebenthal, Joel, Radical Rags: Fashions of the Sixties, New York, 1990. Articles "Twiggy in Bibaland," in Vogue (London), December 1973. "Biba: What Went Wrong?" in Drapers Record (London), 30 August 1975. "Biba," in the Times (London), 1 April 1976. "Biba is Back: A 'Paradise' in London," in Drapers Record (London), 2 December 1978. "Bye-Bye Biba—Hello Hulanicki," in Women's Journal (London), March 1981. Brampton, Sally, "Bringing Up Baby," in the Observer (London), 4September 1983.

Neustatter, Angela, "Biba and Son," in the Sunday Times Magazine (London), 18 May 1986. Samuel, Kathryn, "Biba Goes Back to the Drawing Board," in the Daily Telegraph (London), 19 June 1986. Neustatter, Angela, "Life No. 3 for the Biba Girl," in the Daily Telegraph (London), 21 January 1987. Cuccio, Angela, "Mini Rock Rolls," in WWD, 10 October 1988. Brampton, Sally, "Barbara Hulanicki and Disgrace," in the Correspondent Magazine (London), 25 March 1990. McRobbie, Angela, "Disgrace," [book review] in the New Statesman and Society, 30 March 1990. Fallon, James, "Barbara Hulanicki, Biba and Beyond," in WWD, 14May 1990. Gandee, Charles, "Barbara Hulanicki is Hot for Miami," in House & Garden, June 1992.

Webb, Michael, "Island Fantasy," in Hospitality Design, July/August 1992. Wilson, Kennedy, "Gone But Not Forgotten: A Success Story of the Swinging Sixties," in the Herald (Glasgow), 5 January 1993. Tredre, Roger, "Heaven Was a Place Called Biba," in the Independent (London), 12 February 1993. Godley, Georgina, "The Importance of Biba," in Blueprint (London), No. 96, April 1993. Young, Lucie, "At Home with Barbara Hulanicki: Color So Bright You Need Shades," in the New York Times, 31 December 1998. *** In the decade from 1964 to 1974, Barbara Hulanicki's design and entrepreneurial skills contributed to the development of an entirely new ethos in British fashion that responded to ideas generated by the rising youth culture of the period.

Hulanicki and her husband, Stephen Fitz-Simon, created a series of fashion businesses, under the name of Biba, perfectly suited to the spirit of change and adventure characterizing the Mod movement originating in London during the early 1960s. Unlike the English establishment rag trade, Hulanicki understood that fashion ideas would, henceforth, originate in the streets of British cities, rather than in couture houses across the Channel. She styled her shop as a meeting spot and a place of entertainment for those interested in a lifestyle represented by the clothes and other goods designed by Hulanicki. Following a year at art school, Hulanicki set up Biba's Postal Boutique in the early 1960s, with herself as designer and Fitz-Simon as business manager. The success of their business was ensured when an early design for a simple smock dress was worn by Cathy McGowan, "Queen of the Mods," on the popular television program Ready, Steady, Go. The first Biba shop was opened in 1964 in a small, old-fashioned chemist's shop on a corner of Abingdon Road, Kensington, London.

Hulanicki concentrated on generating a unique atmosphere through décor, music, and the glamor of the young shop assistants—all of which turned her shop into an instant "scene," a gathering place for a hip, young clientéle who knew where to go for the latest ideas in clothing, without even the benefit of a sign over the shop-front. Hulanicki's early clothes were short, simple dresses, the "Biba smock," which became the uniform for an era. Her little girl look was given a major boost when Julie Christie selected her wardrobe for the film Darling from the Biba shop. Other early customers included Sonny and Cher, Twiggy, and Mick Jagger. The typical Biba dolly girl would have a slim, boyish figure, huge eyes and a childlike pout, updating the Audrey Hepburn gamine look of the 1950s. She would wear a simple mini dress selected from a wide range of muted colors—blueberry, rust, plum—which Hulanicki called Auntie colors, as they had previously been associated with the wardrobes of old ladies.

At this time, she also introduced the first fashion t-shirts, distinguished from their ordinary equivalent by the range of Auntie colors in which they were dyed. The t-shirts initiated the unisex appeal of Biba goods. In 1966 the shop moved to larger premises in Kensington Church Street. The new boutique sported a black and gold art nouveau logo and was decorated in an eclectic mix of late 19th-century decadent motifs, Victoriana, and art deco. Hulanicki expanded her range of clothing to include fashion accessories, including bangles and feather boas displayed on old-fashioned bentwood hatstands, cosmetics, menswear, and household accessories. The Church Street Biba became an internationally known symbol of swinging London in the mid-1960s. In the early 1970s, the Biba style developed in the direction of retro glamor and glitter. Hulanicki introduced a line of children's clothing that followed the styles and colors of the adult ranges. She featured items such as straw hats with veils and artificial flowers, velvet, and lace, all enhanced by a new element of innocent eroticism and unchildlike glamor.

Her cosmetics had, by the late 1960s, become big business, the range of colors corresponding to the Auntie colors of her clothing and including bizarre hues such as blue, green, purple, and black lipstick, eye shadow and powder. Rapidly increasing sales forced Biba to move again, in 1969, to a larger shop in Kensington High Street, where art nouveau and art deco fused into a single style that became Biba's own. During the early 1970s, Hulanicki and Fitz-Simon expanded their operations to the U.S. through New York's Bergdorf Goodman, which set up a Biba boutique in its flagship store. The final phase of expansion came in 1973, when Hulanicki opened the Biba department store in the former Derry and Toms premises in Kensington High Street, London. This enormous art deco building housed a huge enterprise that provided a complete setting, including an all-day restaurant and nightly entertainment in the glamorous Rainbow Room, exotic roof gardens, and a kasbah for the elegant and exotic retro style clothes, all designed by Hulanicki.

The Biba store was, for a short time, a mecca for fashionable young Londoners looking for a setting in which to parade the elegant and eclectic clothing of the period. Management difficulties forced Hulanicki to leave Biba in the mid-1970s. She eventually moved to Brazil and thence to Florida, where she began to design under the Hulanicki name. Her groundbreaking designs in the 1960s and 1970s were showcased in an exhibition entitled "Biba, the Label, the Lifestyle, the Look," which opened in 1993 at the Laing Gallery in Newcastle and later traveled to the Aberdeen Art Gallery. In the 1990s, Hulanicki turned to interior design, using bold colors to revitalize hotels in Miami's South Beach and the Caribbean. She drew both praise and criticism for her wild combinations that splashed together dozens of hues in buildings, including the Pink Sands Hotel and Compass Point in the Bahamas and the Leslie in Miami. She won an award from the Miami Design Preservation League for her redesign of the Marlin Hotel. Later, the same group blasted her color choices for other projects.

"Barbara was at the forefront of changing the local colors from pastel to bright," Michael D. Kinerk, chairman of the Miami Design Preservation League, told Lucie Young of the New York Times. "It is the position of the league that the Art Deco district's colors should now swing back to more historically appropriate ones." Young quoted Miami photographer Steven Brooke as observing that "the colors [Hulanicki] uses might be legal but they are egregiously ugly." Hulanicki took the criticisms in stride, noting that similar critiques had been leveled at her early fashions, which in the end revolutionized fashion. "It's about energy," she told Young. "It has the same effect on babies and adults: it makes our minds tick." —Gregory Votolato; 1000+ images about BIBA on Pinterest | Rainbow room, 1960s and Vintage clothing Biba was an iconic London boutique, open from 1964 to 1975.

It was the brainchild of designer Barbara Hulanicki and run by she and her husband, Stephen Fitz-Simon See More 1000+ images about BIBA FASHION on Pinterest | The 1960s, Catwalk and Swinging london Forward The first famous Biba store opened in Kensington in 1964. Biba was an iconic and popular London fashion store of the 1960s and 1970s. It was started and primarily run by the Polish-born Barbara Hulanicki with help of her husband Stephen Fitz-Simon.

See more 1000+ images about Barbara Hulanicki & Biba on Pinterest | Counter display, Helmut newton and 1960s Forward The most famous of all boutiques flourished in Carnaby Street and Camden was Biba(in an Art Deco department sore on Kensington High Street) the first British boutique to enter the popular consciouness and change the way ordinary girls in the high street dressed.Young women finally had access to high fashion and low cost,unlike the preceding decade,status was no longer lay in the price of something,but in the immediacy of the design.Fashion was no longer just about garments but about body… See More speakfashion.us Hulanicki, Barbara Hulanicki, Barbara Barbara Hulanicki , Polish Fashion Icon and Fashion Entrepreneur, born 1936 in Warsaw. Hulanicki started her career studying design at Brighton School of Art . She gained popularity early on, winning a beachwear competition in 1955. Hulanicki continued to work as a freelance fashion illustrator for famous fashion publications including Vogue , Tatler and WWD . Also she sold her own designs through a fashion column in the London Daily Mirror.

In 1964, Hulanicki opened the fashion retailer Biba which soon gained great popularity among musicians, film stars and artists including Mick Jagger, David Bowie and Cathy McGowan. The famous Vogue Editor Anna Wintour started her career in fashion working as a saleswoman at Biba. The store became a London fashion staple selling vibrant designs at affordable prices to young customers. Today, Hulanicki owns an interior design business in Miami with which she has designed various hotels and retailer interiors. She also consults British and American fashion retailers in their business and has designed a collection for the British high street retailer Topshop. Hulanicki has become an international fashion icon and continues to shape and inspire the fashion retail business. Barbara's Page Barbara Hulanicki - Style icon and founder of Biba 2016 Barbara showcasing her 'Ophelia' wallpaper designed exclusively for Graham & Brown - image from her Fb page Barbara at work - 15th July 2016 as posted on her Fb page Barbara & Disney (Villains) Another original creation for Graham & Brown inspired by Disney Villains!

Barbara Hulanicki Returns To Biba After 39 Years… And We Can’t Wait It’s official: fashion designer Barbara Hulanicki will be reunited with Biba, the label she created that defined Swinging London in the 1960s. The 78-year-old tantalised her fans with news of the deal with House of Fraser, who bought the rights to the iconic label in 2009, telling the Sunday Times: 'I’ve got Biba flowing through my veins.' Hulanicki confirmed she will design a special capsule collection for the department store which will hit shops autumn 2015. The news marks a dramatic u-turn for the Polish-born designer who has criticised House of Fraser in the past for pricing the Biba label too expensively despite being 'more like Woolworths'.

In the early 1960s Biba prided itself on both its affordability and accessibility, creating overnight celebrity looks on the high street at a cheap price.Over the years Biba became synonymous with the 1960s look: mini skirts, feather boas and maxi coats were quickly dubbed ‘The Biba Look’ and its legacy is still felt today.What better way to celebrate Barbara’s return than with a few of our favourite Biba looks? Take a look below… This Biba fashion picture shows a trilby hat in plum felt, an orange and purple striped cotton shirt, a plum wool skirt and a brown leather satchel. We want it all! Born in Poland, but raised in England, Barbara Hulanicki began her career in Fashion in the early 1960's working as a freelance fashion illustrator covering all the important fashion collections for the major publications of the day, including Women's Wear Daily, British Vogue, the Times, the Observer and the Sunday Times.

In 1964 she founded, with her late husband, Stephen Fitz-Simon, the boutique BIBA, beginning as a small mail-order business featured in the fashion columns of newspapers such as the DAILY MIRROR The Biba success story is worthy of a Hollywood movie: a husband and wife, Barbara Hulanicki and her partner, Stephen Fitz-Simon, go into business together against the advice of those around them. After a few false starts and refusing to give up, their last-ditched attempt -- a pink gingham dress with a round hole in the back and a matching head scarf -- strikes a chord with the public and sells thousands of units, allowing them to open a store which becomes an icon of hip 60's and 70's London. It becomes a hangout for artists, film stars and rock musicians, including Mick Jagger and the Rolling Stones, David Bowie and Marianne Faithful among the regulars. The first Biba store was a small Chemist's shop in Abingdon Road, but by the time Biba's doors closed in 1976 it had evolved into an elaborate 5-story Art Deco department store with a restaurant and a roof garden overlooking High Street Kensington.

The avant-garde BIBA cosmetics brand was being sold in 33 countries across the globe. Biba finally closed its doors in 1976, a victim of corporate raiding before the term had even entered the business vernacular. Hulanicki continued to work in Fashion, designing for such fashion greats as Fiorucci and Cacharel and for twelve years, from 1980 to 1992, designed a successful line of children's wear, MINIROCK, licensed to the Japanese market. In 1980, she returned to the UK from living in glamorous Brazil to open a series of clothing boutiques and start a make-up line, all under her own name. From 1980 to 1987, she dabbled in fashion photography for the London Evening Standard and returned briefly to fashion illustration to draw Sarah Ferguson's wedding dress for the London newspapers. In 1983 she wrote her memoirs in the book FROM A TO BIBA, which was published by Hutchinson's.

In 1987 she arrived in Miami Beach where she reinvented herself yet again as a designer of interiors and exteriors, single-handedly re-conceiving Miami Beach's then re-emerging Art Deco District. Her projects began with Woody's on the Beach, which she designed in 1987 for Ron Wood of the Rolling Stones. She created a series of restaurants, night clubs and super-clubs, including Who's in the Grove, Sempers, Match Club and Bolero Restaurant. From 1992 to 1997 she worked for Gloria and Emilio Estefan designing the interiors for their personal recording studios, the Cardozo Hotel on Ocean Drive, their private home on Star Island, costumes for the music video "Mi Buen Amor", as well as consulting on BONGO, the Estefan's restaurant in Disney World, Orlando, with the Architectonica Group. From 1990 to 2006, Hulanicki has perhaps had the most impact on Miami Beach through her work for Chris Blackwell and his Island Outpost Group.

She twice reconceived the MARLIN Hotel, on Collins Avenue, as well as the CAVALIER Hotel, Ocean Drive, the LESLIE Hotel, Ocean drive, The NETHERLANDS building, Ocean Drive, and the KENT on Collins Avenue. Other Caribbean properties she has designed for Blackwell include the COMPASS POINT Hotel and beach resort in Nassau, Bahamas - which is prominently featured in all the Bahamian Tourist Board television commercials - as well as the PINK SANDS resort on Harbor Island, Bahamas. In 1993 Hulanicki won an award from the American Institute of Architects for her work on the NETHERLANDS, as well as an award from an association of Florida Architects. Hulanicki's other projects have included private luxury homes on Palm Island and Dilido Island in Miami as well as several commercial properties, including the BEACH HOUSES at CORAL SANDS HOTEL on Harbor Island, Bahamas and hotel development for Chris Blackwell's GOLDENEYE in Oracabessa, Jamaica. One of the crowning achievements of Hulanicki's impact can be witnessed in the opening of the Hollywood hit movie "The Birdcage".

A sweeping helicopter shot flows over the waves to zero in on the primary location for the film, the Cleveland Hotel on Ocean Drive, which is flanked by no less than four Hulanicki-designed buildings - the Leslie, the Cardozo, the Cavalier and the Netherlands. Additionally, throughout her career, Hulanicki has designed costumes for several stage and film productions, including clothing for Cathy McGowan on the influential live TV rock show "READY STEADY GO" (1964), outfits for Julie Christie in "DARLING" (1965), costumes for local productions in Miami Beach, costumes for old friend and Biba model Twiggy for "CAPTAIN BEAKY" in London's West End and her Royal Command Performance in 1976. From 2001 to 2002 she worked on the Island life Ministore, located in the heart of Miami Beach on Ocean Drive. Hulanicki renovated this unique shop at owner Chris Blackwell's request. Coined as "tropical lux," this lifestyle store contained a large collection of ethnic gift items, music, film, jewellery and accessories from around the world.

It also boasted men's, women's and children's apparel designed by Hulanicki. In 2003 she delved back into product and fashion design, with a collection of handbags for COCCINELLE, Italy, Wallpapers and Illustrations for Graham and Brown, both of which still retain her to design new collections. Through Graham & Brown, Barbara's wallpaper is now available in the UK at NEXT and in the USA at TARGET and her new Paint Collection will be launched in the UK at '100% Design London', the UK's leading contemporary interiors event connecting the worlds of architecture and design with innovative, contemporary interior products. She has also designed Wallpaper and textile designs for HABITAT stores in the UK. In 2008 she went back to herroots and designed a fashion collection for TOP SHOP, which included her fashion illustrations used as prints. The Victoria and Albert Museum recently republished her memoirs FROM A TO BIBA and accompanied the book launch with a range of her jewellery and scarf designs. Subsequently her autobiography inspired November Films, an Independent Film Company, to document her life and career in a recently released feature film called BEYOND BIBA.

Deservedly recognized now as a British fashion icon, Barbara has been bestowed with Honorary Doctorates from the Academic Institutions Heriot -Watt University in Edinburgh and The University of Brighton. Many more Fashion Design Universities are now approaching her to share the simple but unique ingredients she incorporates into all that she designs. She has become a Patron of the recently formed Fashion Retail Club, endorsing its mission to bring opportunities available in the world of fashion retail closer to Club members who are undergraduates and graduates of fashion design related courses. The Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufacturers and Commerce (RSA) inducted her last year (2009) as a Royal Designer for Industry. Constantly breaking new ground Barbara has been invited to exhibit at the Calix Gustav Gallery in the Design District during the Art Basel Fair Miami Beach 2010, the most important art show in the United States. It is a cultural and social highlight for the Americas. As the sister event of Switzerland's Art Basel, the most prestigious art show worldwide for the past 41 years, exhibition sites are located in the city's beautiful Art Deco and Design District, so familiar to Barbara.

Barbara continues to bring her innovative, unique and distinctive creative flair as a design & retail consultant to a number of US and UK major fashion and home ware retailers, supplying designs exclusive to each company. Her most recent collaboration is with George at Asda where Barbara has created exclusive illustrations for the T-Shirts going into their Tickled Pink Breast Awareness campaign in September 2010 and following on with exclusive womenswear collections under the brand of 'Barbara Hulanicki for George', the first collection launching in November 2010 and subsequent collections into 2011. The narrative on this page is replicated from the original Barbara Hulanicki web-site Collaboration with Asda - 2010 Seamless from Biba by Barbara Hulanicki Nothing evokes the glamour and energy of the Sixties and Seventies fashion world more than the designs of Barbara Hulanicki and her iconic label, Biba . Her clothes were worn by Twiggy and Bowie as well as countless style-conscious young people who flocked to her Kensington emporium. But she was also a talented interior designer and rejuvenated areas of Miami and the Bahamas with her strikingly colourful hotels revamps. This gorgeous book showcases her rich and varied career.

Twiggy as a Fairy Proud Mother Fashion designer Barbara Hulanicki and her son Witold on their special relationship From fashion parties and fancy-dress parades to lessons in feminism, Barbara Hulanicki and her son Witold have always been close. Katie Burnetts The Observer , Sunday 2 February 2014 Her story Barbara Hulanicki , 77, fashion designer and founder of Biba I named Witold after my father, and from a young age he was incredibly strict about how his name should be pronounced. It's "Vee-told!" he'd remonstrate sternly. When I told my mother I was pregnant, she said: "At last!" I was 30, which was regarded as late. Fitz, my late husband, was absolutely crazy about Witold. Whenever I had one of my hormonal eruptions the two of them would say: "We're going out. Let us know when you're better." They were a very close father/son unit. We always had a home near the [Biba] shop so Witold would come in everyday and sit down at a little table next to me, sticking things together.

He thought all the assistants in the shop were his actually sisters. "He's a hippy child, my best friend and I am tremendously proud of him', Barbara Hulanicki and son Witold. Photograph: Barbara Hulanicki" We waited for him to become difficult, but it never came. When we found out that Fitz had three months to live [Stephen Fitz-Simon died of cancer in 1997], Witold was 29 – and he was so strong. He never cried. The day Fitz died, we were so spent that to cheer ourselves up we watched Absolutely Fabulous the whole afternoon. Two months later, I got cancer in the uterus. I said to Witold: "Now I'm going to go" – he almost dissolved. I knew then I had to get my act together and keep going – for him. A couple of years ago he married a boy. Now I have two sons and I'm crazy about them both. He came out by sending me a photo of them saying he'd met somebody. I was a bit upset that he had waited so long. But everything has its own time. He's a hippy child, my best friend and I am tremendously proud of him.

He's just like Fitz. Very strong. Resilient. Not at all like me. His story Witold Fitz-Simon, 46, yoga teacher Even as a toddler, I knew that the furniture, the colours, the design of our house – was different to other people's. Mum and Dad worked so hard and always on amazing things. On New Year's Eve I would be woken at 11.30pm by my nanny and taken to the Biba store to watch the fancy-dress parade from backstage. I was never excluded. They were such a strong unit. And when we moved to Brazil, where they knew nobody, it didn't matter because they had each other. Whenever there was a piece on them in the newspapers they'd buy 15 copies for their archives. I thought everyone's mum was famous for something. I'd look at other kids and think – your mum isn't constantly creating things? Mum made me a feminist. I was in awe of how she juggled the work-life balance so expertly. She was empowered and valued by all. When things with Biba fell apart, their world came crashing down. I was seven and couldn't do anything about it.

I put my arms round her, but felt it wasn't enough. Dad died so quickly. But I still had mum, and we continued doing the things we always did together. We even considered pitching a satirical magazine show about the fashion industry. When I met my husband, it was clear this was an important relationship. I sent her a selfie of us. She giggled which was the best possible response you could hope for. I wish her father hadn't been killed [Hulanicki's father was assassinated by paramilitaries in 1948]. She lost him when she was 12 years old in dreadful circumstances. She's a real inspiration. Creative, uncompromising and has lived a fearless life. I'm so grateful for that. And now the IconClub I love the instantly recognisable artwork using my favourite colour wave! I love this nod (deliberate or not) to the new re-imagined St. Trinians! Page updated : 7th November 2016 Web-design © J Anna Ludlow 2010 - Intellectual Rights © J Anna Ludlow 2010 - Original Artwork © J Anna Ludlow 2010

Question: Which famous fashion emporium was started by Barbara Hulanicki in London in 1964?
Answer: Biba