As you know when I pop down to London for a visit I like to combine the primary purpose of my trip with a bit of culture. Sometimes that’s a walk around the shops in Regent Street, and sometimes if I can I like to combine it with visiting an exhibition. Last summer (yes, I know it’s taken a while to share these) I was able to do just that and dragged MOH along to the Biba exhibition at the Fashion & Textiles Museum in Bermondsey. Which despite growing up and living in London until a year or so before I’d never been to, but that’s how it goes sometimes isn’t it.
It’s a great museum, and one I’m sure I’ll be back to in the future. If you’ve not discovered this already it’s ‘the only UK museum dedicated to showcasing contemporary fashion and textile design’ and was set up by Dame Zandra Rhodes in 2003, and is housed in a very distinctive, and very Zandra building - it’s definitely easy to spot as you approach it!
I’d heard of Biba, the shops and the clothes, but didn’t really know much more as in the mid-seventies I was under ten years old, which is a pretty good excuse I’d say! But I knew how iconic it was, and was keen to learn more - and while it wouldn’t be the number one thing that MOH would choose to go to, he was happy to come along, which was just as well as I’d got him a ticket!
The exhibition shares the Biba story from 1964 when the first Biba Boutique opened to 1975 when the legendary Big Biba closed its doors; it explores how Biba blossomed to become the world’s first lifestyle label which ‘sparked a revolution in how people shopped’ and how Biba became the brand that epitomises the 60s and 70s fashion.
In this post I’m sharing some of the fashion illustrations by Barbara Hulanicki who established a mail-order company selling affordable fashion appealing to a new generation of young women. I’ll share more of the clothes and the lifestyle brand in future posts next month.
Barbara had a natural aptitude for art, and that became her refuge following the assassination of her father. She studied fashion at Brighton Art School (now the University of Brighton) and started her first career as a fashion illustrator in 1957 where she covered the Paris couture shows for publications such as Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar, as well as working on British newspapers.
The show notes said that ‘as one of the most in-demand fashion illustrators of the period’ she had close contact with those putting on the couture shows, and their collections and she realised ‘how out of step they were with the emerging world of youth culture and the lives of young women’.
What’s interesting to me is seeing how the illustrations change, the earlier ones which I assume are from the couture shows are of designs which are much more formal - and very reminiscent of ‘Breakfast at Tiffany’s’ even though the film wasn’t released until 1961, based on the novella published in 1958, so I may need to revise my thoughts on who influenced who!
The illustration on the left below from circa 1963 still retains some of that formality, but the other two images are much more informal - and the central one especially includes bold colours and patterns.
It was in 1963 that Barbara established Biba’s Postal Boutique whilst continuing with her career as a fashion illustrator - and what’s also fascinating to me is how many of these styles, both the formal and more informal designs, could still easily be worn today - and in fact probably are!
My favourite illustration from this part of the exhibition is the one above. Doesn’t the colour and the design just sing out, and oh to have that much talent for designing and drawing these too.
It was truly a fascinating exhibition, and looking back over my photos, it was great to be able to go along and see so much of the story first hand - I’ll share more next month of the clothes and the Biba lifestyle brand, and I’m sure some of the clothes influenced clothes I wore growing up as even though I wasn’t yet in double figures the styles were very familiar.