Barbara Hulanicki's Influence on Fashion
By Founding Biba, Barbara Hulanicki Revolutionised Women's Fashion
Barbara Hulanicki can genuinely claim the mantle of style icon that is bandied about so much these days. Born in 1936 in Poland but raised in England, Hulanicki is an alumni of the prestigious Central St Martins College of Art and Design, where she studied Fine Art. There she honed her skills and broke into the fashion industry, not originally as a designer but as a fashion illustrator. Her work appeared in such magazines as Tatler and Vogue.
Launch Of A Legend - Biba is Born
Barbara Hulanicki soon began designing her own clothes. After she met her husband Stephen Fitz-Simon, they launched their own mail order business called Biba, which was named after her sister, whose nickname was Biba.
As the popularity of her easy-to-wear and trendy designs grew, she opened a shop in 1963, which soon became a mecca for the uber fashionable to not only buy their clothes but hang out with other creative and interesting people and soak up the atmosphere. Biba employed only the most glamorous shop assistants, including a young Anna Wintour, who adored the clothes and went on to become the legendary editor of American Vogue.
Hulanicki’s Biba brainchild made shopping fun and accessible; she sold high-fashion clothes for inexpensive prices. It paved the way for the modern British high street. As the Biba brand continued to grow, this was reflected in the size of the store. She opened a second, much larger five-story Art Deco Biba shop on High Street Kensington, complete with roof terrace and restaurant, Hulanicki describes her Biba shop as, "really like a club, (there was) no actual name above the door, it was really very underground." Celebrities like Mick Jagger and David Bowie were regular visitors. Biba truly turned shopping into the fun, social experience that it is today.
End Of An Era
All good things must come to an end though, and Biba closed in 1976, after which Barbara Hulanicki focused on interior design, building a very successful company in Miami. However, she kept two outlets for her fashion design skills: a childrenswear range, Minirock, which is only sold in Japan, and her own boutique, which she opened in 1980.
There was a slight glitch in 2006, when the Biba brand was re-launched; however, this was nothing to do with Barbara Hulanicki. The company who funded Biba in the '60s and '70s sold the Biba trademark without her permission, and she has not affiliated herself in any way with this strand of the Biba legacy.
Collaboration with Topshop
In 2009 Barbara Hulanicki made a high-profile return to mainstream womenswear fashion design, creating a collection for high street giant Topshop. It is a very fitting collaboration, as Topshop is the Biba for this generation; Barbara is coming full circle, creating clothes for the girls whose mothers used to shop in Biba.
Her vision of how high fashion should be accessible to all can be seen in every high street, in every city in the world. She truly is a fashion legend.
Barbara Hulanicki
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