Barbara Hulanicki

Interview By Tara Sinn
Portrait By Naomi Fisher

Vice Vice: It seems like you had such a clear vision with Biba. It was a very specific art-nouveau- and art-deco-inspired, old-Hollywood glamour look. I was wondering how that came about.

Barbara Hulanicki: The color palette was great. Everything was dark browns and purples and lots of black. It was very lush and boudoirish.
It’s funny because when I think about the fashion of the 60s, mod colors come to mind—pop-art reds and whites and royal blues. Your aesthetic was different.
What do you mean?
Yeah, I can see that.
I read that you were in art school and you started out as a fashion illustrator.
How did you go from illustrating to making and selling clothes?
Women’s Wear Daily, Vogue, Harper’s, Queen It seems like everything you were doing—the clothes, the shop, the way you presented retail as an “experience”—was the complete opposite of what everyone else was doing at the time.
In the beginning, everything you made was limited run, which really created the idea of cult items that people just had to have.
It’s so different now.
It must have been exciting to do it that way.
I was reading about the catalogues that you produced. In the 50s and 60s, catalogues were thick books of drawings. You were the first to do a catalogue with photos that looked like magazine editorials.
Never know until you ask, I guess.
You had so many different ideas, and many of them you actually brought to fruition. There was a men’s line, a children’s line, shoes, jewelry, grocery items, coffee, tea, cat food, dog food—even
It seems like the expansion of the Biba line was a reflection of the changes in your personal life.
You came out with a black lipstick, right?
You were so ahead of the times! Even nowadays, if somebody does something that bold, people freak out. As recently as last year, YSL put black lipstick on their models and people were like, “Ooh, it’s so weird.” I can’t imagine what people thought about something like that in the 60s.
Did you wear the lipstick as well?
It sounds like you were creating an army of young girls that were all tuned into your look.
Let’s jump ahead to when you moved into the seven-story “Big Biba” store. Not only was it a full-service department store, it was, again, a place to hang out. You had film stars, artists, and rock stars like the Rolling Stones and David Bowie coming in. Brigitte Bardot would be there. It just struck me that nowadays a lot of designers court celebrities so they can pack the front row of their shows with them and get them to wear their clothes.
Yeah. But it seems like people just naturally came to hang out at the Biba store because it was a cool place to be.
A few years after you moved into the big building, the shop closed. There were a number of factors involved—the economy in Britain, there was an oil crisis…
Yes, very much so. How did you move on from that? I imagine it was difficult and heartbreaking.
Why Brazil?
And it seemed like the place to go after London?
And how did you end up in Miami?
I hear you have some fashion projects going on now.
And then when does the Topshop line come out?
I feel like Topshop has taken a page from what Biba did. They make current fashion that’s very affordable.
Barbara in the rooftop garden (complete with live swans) at the Big Biba department store in London. Twiggy in Biba. Classic Biba cosmetics chart. Click each section to enlarge A 1973 Biba poster that was supposed to be used as an advertisement in the London Airport, but was banned on account of tushy.