Biba is back, OysterBIBA IS BACK
Published in Oyster, Australia’s cutting edge fashion magazine
View this article on Oyster's website.
It’s official - Biba is back. With Bella Freud now at the helm of this quintessentially British brand, it has taken to the catwalks for Spring/Summer 2007 a good 40 years after the first ever Biba boutique opened its doors.
To understand today’s incarnation of course, you have to appreciate its deeply groovy beginnings. Fashion illustrator Barbara Hulanicki came up with the Biba concept in 1964. Post war London was swinging and all the pretty young things were crying out for a lifestyle brand that fed their newly insatiable desire for frippery and fashion.From her first small West London shop, Hulanicki expanded to the seven story Derry & Toms building on Kensington High Street, where Biba became a department store selling everything from furniture and feather boas to washing powder and pet food.
It was the original concept store and a shopping adventure like no other. Staff were forbidden to approach customers with the old fashioned ‘Are you being served?’ You could gauchely sprawl in the shop windows or catch the New York Dolls perform in the Rainbow Room. David Bowie took tea on the Roof Garden among the flamingos and penguins and Brigitte Bardot, Raquel Welch, Jack Nicholson, Freddy Mercury and Mick Jagger were all regulars in among its part art deco, part Victoriana interior.
Described at the time as ‘a dream machine’ and ‘like walking into Narnia’, Biba became destination number one for the gloriously wasted. But, like all fantasies, it ended in 1975 as Britain’s economy started to slide and Hulanicki lost ownership of the property. Biba closed but its legacy – fashion for all - has survived to influence generations of designers and any fan of fashion could still recognise the smudgy kohl eyes, swirling sleeves, rear skimming skirts and vertiginous heels of a Bibaphile at 30 paces.
Biba biographer Alwyn W Turner writes in his book The Biba Experience: ‘Biba fulfilled the rock & roll promise to live fast, die young and leave a beautiful corpse.’ In today’s nostalgic fashion climate though, Biba’s iconic status is ready to rave from the grave. And who better to head up the revival than West London girl Bella Freud. Daughter of Lucian, great granddaughter of Sigmund, former assistant to Vivienne Westwood and with an enviable celebrity clientele for her own-name fashion knitwear brand, she has Biba in her veins.
“When I was 11 we shared a house with another family and the eldest girl, who was 18, used to wear this long striped T-shirt dress and platform clogs from Biba. I was a die-hard tomboy at the time but those clothes made me interested in being a girl,” she recounts of her earliest Biba memories. “When I was a teenager all my mother’s cool friends wore Biba too. It had such a good atmosphere and seemed like a story that hadn’t finished yet. That to me is the challenge and the appeal of designing for Biba now.”
Her launch collection for Autumn/Winter 2006 looked to Biba’s annuls to find key rock & roll looks from the 60s and 70s (designs that were themselves originally inspired by 20s romanticism) and then gave them a distinctly 21st century twist. “The archives were fascinating. There were so many covetable pieces that I knew would be great to reinterpret. I wanted the Biba spirit to be very evident, with all the youthfulness of it, but for the clothes to still be entirely relevant to today. The first collection invoked the mood of a woman at a pop festival discovering things, someone interested in music and poetry who had some guts and feistiness.”
Bella’s Dietrich jackets, high waisted velvet trousers, lurex cigarette pants, piano sleeved silk blouses and crepe de chine mini dresses in exotic, dark hues were all worthy of the Biba mantle and readied the label for the star studded catwalk presentation in September. Anita Pallenberg (one of the few present to have really lived Biba the first time around), Amanda Harlech, Laura Bailey, Erin O'Connor, Jefferson Hack, Phoebe Philo, Lucy Ferry, Hugh Grant and Jemima Khan lined the front rows as mere fashion industry mortals joined the full house scrum for Bella’s sumptuous Spring/Summer 07 show.
Models Behati Prinsloo and Lily Cole hippy hippy shook shook down the catwalk in cream cord pantaloons, dungarees, flowing kaftans, lace tunic dresses, short trenches, lemon and plum floor length gowns and star print shirts. The clothes were complimented by ‘B’ buckle clutch bags, deep platform sandals and Cuban heel boots designed by Tony Cappiello, gold and gem jewellery by Fiona Knapp and wide brimmed sun hats by Christine Bec. The Beetles blared out of the speakers and the audience roared.
Yet off the catwalk, the collection is neither intimidating nor aggressively directional. Instead Freud has delivered a truly wearable, urbane and pleasurable ready to wear wardrobe for the new Biba customer. And today’s hip chicks will soon have a whole lifestyle brand to delve into once again thanks to 2007 plans for fragrance, cosmetics and eyewear ranges all sporting Biba’s authentic black packaging. “We’re expanding like crazy,” Bella says. “Next season is super luxe and really naughty and glamorous. It’s for all the sexy nutters out there.”
That means you.
Words Helen Jennings