Activities

Today in a world populated by trend setters who launch their own designs marketing on the internet, it is hard to remember a time when this was not a revolutionary idea. However, in the summer of 1963, it was when fashion illustrator Barbara Hulanicki began her mail order company via which she sold fashion appealing to a new generation of young women. She named it Biba.

Biba blossomed into the world’s first lifestyle label changing the way people shopped and, in its popularity, becoming a brand that epitomised hip 1960s and 70s fashion. It became, in short like the miniskirt, a fashion phenomenon.

Join us for our private tour of this exhibition at the Fashion and Textile Museum. Led by its assistant curator, we will focus on the years 1964 when the first Biba boutique opened, to 1975 when the legendary Big Biba closed its doors. On display are fantastic archival pieces of clothing, original photographs, film, and material all of which have been personally chosen by Barbara Hulanicki.

‘It isn’t just selling dresses, it’s a whole way of life’, Barbara Hulanicki, 1970.