AT HOME WITH THE QUEEN OF CHIC

ON HOW HER ICONIC LABEL BIBA WAS A MAGNET FOR THE RICH AND FAMOUS

BARBARA HULANICKI

As the creative dynamo behind the iconic label Biba, Barbara Hulanicki helped change the

face of fashion and as the designer prepares to celebrate her 80th birthday later this year, she is as prolific as ever.

“I get high on what I do, on creativity,” she tells hello! in this exclusive interview at her stylish home in Miami. “My belief is that if you put out there what you’d like to achieve, it comes to you.”

With a stream of commissions to put her distinctive mark on the interiors of luxury hotels in Miami, plus her own shoe collection for French Sole and a fashion book for which she has provided illustrations – both launching in September – this will be another big year for the irrepressible fashion powerhouse.

IN FULL SWINGBarbara, whose Biba empire revolutionised high-street fashion, has been on a creative roll since opening her first boutique in London’s fashionable Kensington in 1964. Her edgy, innovative, affordable collections prompted

excited customers to queue around the block. A year later she opened a larger store nearby.

By 1973 Biba fever had taken hold and Barbara opened Big Biba, a seven-floor department store in an art deco building that sold everything from her latest fashion collections to cosmetics, wallpaper and soft furnishings. Biba’s bohemian chic captivated celebrities, rock’n’roll royalty and, on one occasion, actual royalty – a young Princess Anne, for whom the Kensington shop was closed.

“She had a long look at everything, but I’m not sure if she sent anyone back to buy anything. In those days the royal family might not have been allowed to wear our clothes as we weren’t haute couture, we were street fashion.

“I’ll never forget a visit from Brigitte Bardot,” adds Barbara as the bright Florida sunshine streams in through the original window behind her. “It was hilarious. She came with her then husband Gunter Sachs, stripped off all her clothes and ran up and down the showroom looking at the latest range while he tried to cover her up.

“Once the boys – Mick Jagger, David Bowie

Effortlessly chic in black and shades, Barbara (above and right) is everything you’d expect the brains behind cult fashion brand Biba to be – forward thinking, self-assured and extremely talented. Preparing to turn 80 this year, her creative flair is mainly expressed these days in her interior design

work. Her own home in Miami Beach (below left) reflects her eclectic style

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‘I get high on what I do,

on creativity’

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and Freddie Mercury – became regular visitors, we put in all the sofas so they’d have somewhere to sit.”

One of Barbara’s early clients went on to become one of the most famous faces on the catwalk and a lifelong friend – Twiggy.

“She was still at school and worked in a hairdresser’s on Saturday but she was always in the shop,” says Barbara. “She was tiny, with a beautiful face that reminded me of Greta Garbo. Later on in her career we used to make her costumes for the stage and we have been close friends ever since.

“Now she has a fashion range of her own. Only a few weeks ago we were sitting together talking about fashion. We started laughing because, five decades down the line, we were having a similar conversation to the ones we had all those years ago.”

Barbara left the company in 1975 and a l though she s igned a consultancy deal in 2014 with House of Fraser – the department

‘My favourite shade is black. I rarely wear any other colour. For me, it represented rebellion and breaking a taboo because it was only meant to be worn if you were over 30 or widowed’

Barbara takes a seat in her kitchen. Despite decades spent designing for the rich and famous, a career highlight is buying – and saving – the beautiful art deco building that became Big Biba, her iconic London store

Barbara’s apartment is painted in cool grey. The furniture is mostly metal, coupled with lots of colourful vintage finds as well as Afghan and Turkmenistan handcrafted pillows and throws. Accents of orange, yellow and green (below right) bring the scheme to life

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store that owns the rights to the label – and flits back to London on a frequent basis, her base is in Miami.

Her move, she tells hello!, came about after Rolling Stones guitarist Ronnie Wood asked her to design the interior of his Miami nightclub, Woody’s on the Beach, in 1987.

“He thought it would take six months but two years later I was still there,” laughs Barbara, who went on to design the homes of celebrities including Gloria Estefan.

“When more projects came my way I ended up staying. Back then, Miami was quite rough and ready. The Miami Vice series starring Don Johnson was a strong inspiration and I loved the atmosphere, but most of all the gorgeous art deco buildings on the seafront.”

After Island Records founder Chris Blackwell asked Barbara to design the interiors of ten buildings he owned in Miami Beach, including the 1930s Marlin Hotel, she became a permanent fixture, helping to breathe new life into the city.

“It was a magical era,” she recalls. “Chris knows all the stars. Madonna, U2, Mick Jagger and Ronnie Wood came to his parties. One night I was sitting next to this quiet little guy and wondered who he was – it turned out to be Prince. There were music studios, of course, and the Spice Girls and Beyoncé would waft in. Then the fashion

crowd came, with Naomi [Campbell] and Kate [Moss] always floating in and out.”

STATE OF ARTBarbara’s home in Miami is an open-plan apartment with high ceilings and an original terrazzo floor. Against a background of slate grey, the space comes alive with vibrant shades of orange – her favourite colour after black – and pieces she has collected over the years.

“When I first came here there were amazing antique shops selling all this incredible Fifties stuff. I went crazy for it and would go hunting at markets and boot sales. I was very big on these orange glass pieces, too, and deco furniture and funky armchairs that cost next to nothing.

“I also collect Ethiopian crosses. I come from a deeply religious family and was brought up a Catholic. As a child I even thought I might become a nun. When I was growing up in Jerusalem, the spiritual atmosphere made you want to pray. I still go to church, especially when I need help, and it works.”

In addition to fashion triumph, Barbara’s life has been punctuated by drama and tragedy. Born in Poland, she moved with her family to Jerusalem, where her diplomat father, who was mediating between the Jewish and Arab states, was assassinated when she was 12. Barbara, her

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mother and her two younger sisters were rescued by the British Government and relocated to Brighton to live with an aunt.

As a youngster she was taught how to make her own clothes. She went on to attend Brighton Art College and became a fashion illustrator. She cites Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret as being among her first style inspirations.

“I’d rush home from school to get the newspapers and see what they were wearing,” says Barbara, who received an OBE in 2012 for services to fashion. “The Queen is still incredibly elegant. I met her at an engagement the year of her Diamond Jubilee and she was wearing the most amazing vintage jacket – transparent and sequinny. She looked amazing and I just thought, ‘Wow!’”

BACK TO BLACKIt was Barbara’s late husband, advertising executive Stephen Fitz-Simon, or Fitz, with whom she had a son, Witold, now 48, who s p o t t e d h e r p o t e n t i a l a n d persuaded her to work in fashion. Using her sister Biruta’s nickname of Biba because it sounded “high

‘Twiggy and I were talking about fashion recently. Five

decades on, we were having a similar conversation to the ones

we had all those years ago’

A leopard doesn’t change its spots: Shortly to enter her ninth decade,

Barbara continues to lead the way in design and in September will launch her collection for shoe brand French Sole. Her philosophy is to be open to

new ideas and not to get tied down to just one thing. “I moved on from

frocks,” she once said

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street, like the daughter of a charlady”, they started a mail-order company and opened their first boutique.

“My collection was a reaction against the staid couture of the era, the antithesis of the nice, ladies-who-lunch type dresses. There was nothing out there for young people,” she says. “I’d always disliked my aunt’s 1930s designer crepe clothes but used their colour palette – plums, dove greys and purples – in my range.

“My favourite shade, of course, is black. I rarely wear any other colour. Do you know there are 54 shades of black? For me, it represented rebellion and breaking a taboo because it was only meant to be worn if you were over 30 or widowed.”

Emotion clouds Barbara’s face when she recalls how, in 1997, Fitz died at the age of 60. “It was the smoking,” she says softly. “He had tumours in his lungs. I’ll never forget being told bluntly, ‘Your husband has three months to live.’ I was in shock. After his death I’d switch on the sport channels just to hear the sound that reminded me of him. It’s what he used to watch, you see. It took me five years before I felt I could breathe again.”

Sinking back into the bold-orange throw that covers her sofa, Barbara surveys the treasures of a lifetime that surround her.

“Perhaps I need to declutter,” she smiles. “In fact, I’d be very happy living in a hotel room – with all my black stuff.”

At work (above, in her home office) and at play (below, with close friend Twiggy), B a r b a r a b ro u g h t affordable fashion to the young through Biba. Her inspiration was early Hollywood. Twiggy often modelled for the label (right, in a bespoke leopard-

print coat in 1973)

INTERVIEW: SALLY MORGAN PHOTOS: DEBORAH ANDERSON

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196 SUSSEX LIFE September 2012 SUSSEX LIFE September 2012 197

It all started with a pink gingham dress. Back in 1964, the Daily Mirror asked fledgling fashion designer Barbara Hulanicki to design a

mail order dress costing just 25 shillings inspired by glamorous images of Brigitte Bardot pictured beside the glittering waters of St Tropez. Barbara’s response was a pink, sleeveless dress with a round hole at the back and a matching head scarf – all in one tiny size, 000 – and it became an overnight sensation.

It marked the dawn of Biba, that iconic fashion label which produced the coolest, grooviest, sexiest clothes the world had ever seen. This was affordable fashion aimed exclusively at the youth market and Britain had never seen anything like it.

At its flagship department store in the old Derry & Toms building overlooking Kensington High Street (a sort of hippy Harrods that sold everything from leopard-print and underpants to dog food), Mick Jagger came to ogle the smoky-eyed girls while Tony Curtis took tea in the famous roof garden, where penguins and flamingos wandered at will with often chaotic consequences.

Biba came to define a generation and it all started in Brighton – a fact that will be celebrated at a major exhibition at Brighton Museum and Art Gallery this September, showcasing the Biba lifestyle, as well as Barbara’s other successful careers in design, fashion illustration and interiors.

Outwardly, Barbara – whose look has long been characterised by a slick, ash-blonde bob and dark glasses – looks as steely and poised as her fearsome fashion counterpart Anna Wintour, who, coincidentally, started her career as a Biba Saturday girl. But that’s where the similarities end. Barbara’s softy spoken voice and dry humour are immediately disarming, though she acknowledges her austere public image can be deceptive.

“My hair is fine and won’t go any other way,” she shrugs, explaining her trademark style. “As for the dark glasses, they’re absolutely necessary because I’m blind as a bat – that’s what old age brings!” And her memories of Wintour? “She was quiet... and a little chubby,” she laughs mischievously.

Barbara, 75, is speaking from her London home, though her main base is the sun-drenched coast of Miami, where she runs her own design studio and has carved a niche designing commercial hotels and clubs (Ronnie Wood and Gloria Estefan are clients).

She came to Brighton – to Preston Park and then Hove – aged 12 when her father, the Polish Consul General in Palestine, was assassinated on the orders of Moscow in 1948. A Polish Catholic, he had helped Polish Jews flee Nazi persecution before the war, but it was his anti-Communist views which were to prove his undoing.

Life in Palestine was sweet, but Barbara’s memories of “sleepy Fifties Brighton” where she, her mother and two sisters sought sanctuary with a stern aunt, are less fond. Barbara and her siblings were made to dress very correctly in twin-sets and pearls, and had to report home by 10pm each evening. Ironically, her aunt’s elegant haute couture look was to

prove one of the biggest influences on Biba design.

Barbara cut her cloth at Brighton Art College where she studied fashion design under the formidable Joanne Brogden. “She terrified me. She was very disciplined and never told you when you’d done well, though it spurred you on to do better.” Fashion design wasn’t highly regarded in a school which prided itself on fine art and illustration. “We spent many classes drawing saggy nudes – usually the homeless women on Brighton beach,” she laughs.

She was advised to go into fashion illustration because she was so “bad” at pattern cutting, and landed a job at the Fashion Illustration Studio in Covent Garden where she worked for such leading titles as Vogue, Queen and the Arts Post. As fashion photography was yet to filter into the mainstream, her job was to encapsulate the key looks of the season with a few deft lines of her pen.

As the legendary founder of

Biba, Barbara Hulanicki

effortlessly set the key Sixties’

fashion trends, dressing

everybody from Twiggy to Julie

Christie. As a major exhibition

opens in her home town of

Brighton, the queen of retro

reveals the inside story of her

iconic clothing label and shares

her seaside memories

INTERvIEW By ANGELA WINTLE

Viva la

BIBaSTyLE: BARBARA HULANICKI

Above: Biba Model photographed in 1964 by Ron Falloon.Left: Barbara Hulanicki in the Music Room at the Royal Pavilion, Brighton. Photo by Tessa Hallmann © Royal Pavilion & Museum

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She changed course when she met her future husband and business partner Stephen Fitz-Simon, who advised her to return to her design roots. They set up a mail-order business from her bedroom, with the aim of making beautiful clothes as affordable as possible – and it took off with that pink gingham dress.

“Before Biba, there were absolutely no clothes for young people in England. In America, there were wonderful things happening, but in the UK we were all desperate, just desperate, for clothes.” Her answer was to design affordable mini-skirts, floppy felt hats, feather boas, velvet trouser suits and unisex T-shirts dyed in rich muted colours.

“At Biba, we designed for just one type – the wonderful English girl with pale white skin and long, long legs. Our look was feminine, with twilight colours which looked great in the English wintery light. We did prunes and purples, dark bluebottle, rough rich colours and a few brights. We didn’t care about seasons or any nonsense like that. Our reference points were the stars of films and Fifties’ musicals – Esther Williams, Greta Garbo and Audrey Hepburn.”

The first Biba boutique was located in a former chemist’s shop in Kensington and it quickly became a hangout for youngsters who wanted something a little dark, a little glamorous and a little different from the prevailing mod aesthetic of the time. Its stylishly decadent atmosphere and lavish decor inspired by Art Nouveau and Art Deco attracted artists, film stars and rock musicians, including the Rolling

Stones, Twiggy and Julie Christie. Even Princess Anne dropped in.

“It was dark inside and we played loud music. People called it the black hole and made up stories about what happened inside. Nobody over a certain age dared go in. But were our lives decadent? Are you kidding? We were working too hard!”

Nevertheless, people bought into the vibe. “I thought the way to get the boyfriends to stay was to get them a seat, so we emulated this place in Beverley Hills that had a pool table and sofas by the window where the guys could watch the girls go by. It helped, of course, that all our assistants were extremely beautiful. There weren’t many clubs in those days and people didn’t go out to eat, so the boutique became a big meeting place.”

Two more shops followed, but by the time Biba’s doors closed in 1976 it had evolved into an elaborate five-storey department store combining Hollywood glamour with victoriana and Pop Art. Shoppers could dine in the Rainbow Room restaurant and night club, which hosted everyone from the New york Dolls to Liberace, or drink cocktails in the roof garden where equally exotic creatures ruled the roost.

“The penguins were horrid... disgusting!” exclaims Barbara. “They were dangerous, pecked like mad

and the leader of the pack got so angry on one occasion that he stormed into the Rainbow Room, closely followed by all the other penguins, which terrified the diners.”

In the late Sixties, Brighton briefly had its own Biba store – in 21 Queen’s Road. “Stock was disappearing by the armful, and when a very famous ex-boxer came to see the ‘governor’ in Church Street [Kensington] to demand protection money, we felt we should call it a day.”

But even Biba HQ vanished almost as quickly as it emerged. There were many reasons (the struggling British economy, the oil crisis), but the tipping point came when a summer catalogue failed to take off, forcing them to join forces with Dorothy Perkins, which, in turn, was bought out by the investment company British Land. Ultimately, relations turned sour and Barbara lost control of the business.

And yet the Biba name lives on. Last year, Brighton Museum and Art Gallery appealed to people with cherished Biba items to bring them along to their ‘Bring in your Biba Day’. “We had an astonishing response from women across the country, but it was particularly strong from Sussex,” says Helen Grundy, Keeper of Exhibitions at the Royal Pavilion and Museums.

“Women from across the county brought in their treasured items and contributed to oral histories about Biba – particularly their memories of shopping at Biba in Brighton. A few even lent us garments which will be on display in the exhibition.”

Barbara, with typical modesty, thinks the label owes its longevity to the remarkable times which spawned it. “The Sixties was a very creative time and we keep coming back to that period. Unlike retailers today, we weren’t governed by a lot of gentlemen sitting round a large table.”

Nevertheless, she refuses to live in the past. She has just completed her 25th capsule collection for George at Asda and continues to design everything from wallpaper to fireplaces. This year her services to fashion were officially recognised when she received an OBE in the Queen’s New year Honours List.

“I don’t stop and I’m not going to either,” she says, with a hint of defiance. “Work to me isn’t work. And I’m just as hungry.” n

Biba and Beyond: Barbara Hulanicki runs at Brighton Museum and Art Gallery from September 22 until April 14 next year. For further information, visit www.brighton-hove-museums.org.uk

Left: Model Vicky Hodge photographed in 1964. Photo by Ron FalloonRight (from left): Trouser Suit, c1971. Photo by Tessa Hallmann © Royal Pavilion & Museums, Brighton & Hove; Biba Model photographed in 1964. Photo by Ron Falloon; Dress, c1969. Photo by Tessa Hallmann © Royal Pavilion & Museums, Brighton & Hove.Below: Barbara today. Photo by Dania Graibe

Barbara Hulanicki in1969. Photo by Neil Libbert

“At Biba, we designed for just one type – the wonderful English girl with pale white skin and long, long legs.”

STyLE: BARBARA HULANICKI