Barbara Hulanicki: She’s a rainbow
When Biba collapsed, Barbara Hulanicki moved to Miami to design hotels. But she still holds a torch for Kensington, as she tells Pendle Harte
Above: Barbara Hulanicki - Photography by Keith Sheriff
Barbara Hulanicki is a legend. As the mother of Biba, she was responsible for the look that defined a generation, the mother of all style gurus. For a brief but significant moment in the early 1970s, Biba was London; and Barbara was Biba. But it is now 30 years since Biba closed down and although Barbara really doesn’t look all that different – platinum bob, perma-shades, dressed exclusively in black – she is quite glad to have escaped to Miami, where she has been able to move on. On visits to London she always makes a point of visiting Kensington High Street and having a look at the remains of her shop, but her new life is all about beaches and tropical splendour, a world away from the grey reality of 1970s London.
Still, Barbara Hulanicki is in London to promote a new book about Biba, Welcome to Big Biba, and staying with a friend in a large and stylish Oxford Gardens house, where we meet. “This is an old Biba mirror from the changing room in Kensington Church Street,” she says, gesturing at a massive gilt-framed piece that dominates the living room. The friend is a former member of Biba staff and, apparently, has lots more Biba stuff upstairs. There’s a bit of a Biba revival going on at the moment, it seems, not that interest in Biba is ever really on the wane, but with the new Bella Freud-designed collection in the shops now, and the new book out, there certainly seems to be something in the air. Though Barbara herself has had nothing to do with the new frocks. “Not at all. Not creatively or commercially,” she says. “We lost the name and this Iranian man in LA picked it up. They had every right to buy the license from him.” And what does she think of the designs? “I haven’t seen them. I sort of try not to look. I was talking to a French journalist who told me that the Biba thing would last another year and then that’s the end. Good!”
It’s all not really her style any more and if she were to do a new line of clothing (which she keeps hinting at – she even has a meeting arranged with a man in India about production) “it won’t be knock offs of the old stuff.” What then? “It would be what Biba would have become if it had grown up and moved to Miami.” Barbara is charming and smiling but quite impenetrable behind dark glasses. She’s not giving much away.
But she’s happy to talk about the past and still holds a big torch for High Street Ken. “When I first came to Kensington High Street it was so funny. It was full of old ladies who were really on their last legs wearing pole hats. There was Barkers, Derry and Toms and Pontings and there was nothing going on in any of them. Pontings had holes in the ceiling and was full of old fabrics, fabulous crepe de chines, all watermarked from the rain. Derrys was about to shut down and there were mice zipping all around the Rainbow Room – and Barkers was even more shambolic than Derrys. We fell in love with Derrys – though I used to think, oh Barkers is almost nicer – and I just loved it immediately. The bones were incredible. Though nobody liked Art Deco in those days, especially not the French-looking stuff with lots of bronze.”
Barbara and her husband Fitz had started a mail-order clothes company from their flat in Cromwell Road; Barbara was a fashion illustrator and Fitz was the business mind. One day the Daily Mirror featured one of their frocks and suddenly their business escalated and outgrew the flat. And the rest is history: they opened a small shop in a crumbling chemist’s shop in Abingdon Road, then moved to Kensington Church Street, then to the high street and finally to the Derry and Toms building, where Big Biba became London’s second most popular tourist attraction after the Tower of London. “I remember a French marketing man saying to me at the time that there were two things people came to London for, A and B – B was Biba and A was abortion. Ha!” Everything inside was designed by Barbara, from the coats to the baked bean tins. She would work with huge colour ranges and even tights would come in 27 different colours, to match all the sweaters and dresses. “It was a huge operation and we could have supported a whole chain of shops but it was important to have all the energy in one place. We produced millions of garments. Millions.” A big part of the ethos of Biba was affordability and clothes were designed to be cheap and throwaway. “It wasn’t until the last shop that we started putting price tickets on things because people knew that there were £3 dresses and £5 dresses. We didn’t start taking cheques until Church Street and there were no credit cards so things had to be affordable, not like today.” And of course there was shoplifting. “Well, that was a compliment. People don’t shoplift stuff that’s horrible.” Some of the most regular shoplifters were the old ladies of Kensington.
“In Church Street there was a step by the door and next to the step was a table full of hair clips. All the old ladies would come in and steal the hair clips and because they were very cheap we let them get away with it. Then we found out that our insurance had gone up terribly and it turned out that the old ladies had been tripping over the step and claiming,” giggles Barbara.
When Biba finally closed its doors in 1975 all the beautiful fittings and paraphernalia were auctioned off while Barbara stayed at home grieving. “I saw one of the mirror units being wheeled down Kensington High Street and it was too sad.” Now she’s hardly got anything left except for a few pieces of artwork – not even clothes. “Oh I wouldn’t be able to get into them anyway. Everything was so tiny.” She always has a snoop on visits to London, gaining access to the building via fire escapes, and once, in the BHS days, she found a stash of old Biba signage on the back stairs. “Then I went upstairs and – oh my God – the Rainbow Room was a conference centre. They’d covered all the marble with the most obnoxious carpet and Fitz’s beautiful office was gone.” And what about this trip? “I’ve already been. I‘ve done what needs to be done. Not upstairs or anything but I went to see the Roland Mouret stuff at Gap and the Viktor and Rolf at H&M. At least there are nice things happening in there like that. BHS was just so boring.” The Kensington Church Street site remained in its original state for years, until recently when Reiss moved in and lost the old tiles and the original window. “It’s such a shame. That place should have been preserved,” says Barbara.
Just like Kensington, Miami Beach was full of little old ladies when Barbara got there, and none of them cared about the Art Deco either. Barbara first went because Ronnie Wood asked her to design a hotel for him there and soon she teamed up with Chris Blackwell of Island Records who was restoring South Beach’s neglected Art Deco hotels. Now, Barbara’s addicted to the tropical and is working on Ian Fleming’s estate in Jamaica, a paradise of beaches and islands that’s set to open as a hotel in 2009. She’s also designed a beach hotel in the Bahamas for Gloria Estefan. Tropical colours are her current love. But she’ll always have a suitcase in Kensington.
Welcome to Big Biba by Steven Thomas and Alwyn W Turner, with a foreword by Barbara Hulanicki, is published by the Antique Collectors Club and priced at £19.95