ONE OF DESIGNER Bella Freud's earliest memories of her mother was watching her get ready for her 21st birthday party (Freud was three at the time). 'She put on a silver A-line mini dress with long sleeves and silver Wellington boots,' she recalls. The outfit was by Biba, but the influence of that dress, and a Biba pink elephant cord short mac Freud was given as a teenager, is clear now that she's been enlisted as creative director to spearhead the return of the fashion label.
It's been more than 30 years since Biba closed the doors on its famous art deco store in London's Kensington High Street. This glamorously decadent emporium, with its coat stands of plum-coloured clothes, swishing boas, and sooty eye makeup, defined the 1960s as much as the Mini, the miniskirt, and the Beatles. Biba was an extraordinary shopping experience, dominated over its 11-year life by the personality of creator Barbara Hulanicki. The Polish-born former fashion illustrator and her husband, Stephen Fitzsimon, wanted to make fashion affordable, edgy and inspiring, and to turn shopping into a social event. There had been nothing like it before and, in many respects, nothing like it since.
Biba pioneered the idea of accessible fashion for all, but particularly for the fashion-starved, skimpy-pursed youth of the day. An office girl could find herself rifling through the same clothes rack as Julie Christie, Twiggy or Anita Pallenberg. And the look didn't just appeal to women; their boyfriends would hang out on the sofas in the shop and sometimes take a shine to the clothes themselves. Pallenberg's boyfriend Keith Richards used to wear her Biba jackets on stage.
'You could spot a Biba girl in the street. There was a definite Biba look,' says Hulanicki's photographic collaborator James Wedge. 'It was the plum lips and dark eyes, a very 30s art deco look.'
One of his photographs of an alluring nude in a red, veiled pillbox hat lying on cushions became a billboard at Heathrow Airport, but was torn down for distracting drivers. Long-haired and sooty-eyed Biba girls such as Caroline Baker, now fashion director of You Magazine in London, would save their wages for the weekly pilgrimage to the store and join queues snaking down the road outside the shop. 'Whether wearing maxis or minis - the Biba gear was the coolest,' she says.
Hulanicki's unique spin on fashion was a blend of art deco, Victorian femininity and Hollywood glamour, with a dash of rock'n'roll rebelliousness. It's this mood that Freud, the daughter of painter Lucien Freud, wants to evoke in the relaunch of the label this autumn. She has immersed herself in the archives, visited collectors and sifted through images of the day to capture that unique essence of the brand.
'It was great to work with the original pieces,' says Freud. 'The crucial thing is the fit. It was narrow, tight and incredibly tiny.' Hulanicki mixed 30s and Victorian styles to elongate the torso and make the body look thinner. In fact, Hulanicki would take her sinuous cut to extremes: Jenny Dingemans, Biba's first press officer recalls just how small Biba's clothes were. 'I remember getting stuck in one dress which I couldn't unzip, even using a coat hanger, so I went to bed in it.'