fashion inspiration: BIBA!

1964 mail order. art nouveau. big hair. little eyebrows. 17,000 gingham dresses.

BIBA!!!

BIBA, the iconic 1960's clothing line relaunched its brand with a young designer, a show in 2006 LDN fashion week and boutique with a hot London address. The new threads are beautiful, however I am much more inspired by the original designs created by Polish born designer Barbara Hulanicki.

Created as an antithet to the 1960's geometric and graphic mod fashions, Hulanicki brought dark, earthy and muted colors to the fashion scene, as inspired by her Auntie and by funerals: blackish mulberries, blueberries, rusts and plums.

Hulanicki described her customer base as 'postwar babies who had been deprived of nourishing protein in childhood and grew up into beautiful skinny people: a designer's dream. It didn’t take much for them to look outstanding.’ BIBA girls were ‘fresh little foals with long legs, bright faces and round dolly eyes.’

Genius marketing and branding by Hulanicki and her business partner and husband, Stephan Fitz-Simon, helped quickly create the BIBA phenomenon. Every single product carried the art deco black and gold logo, which was reconstructed according to the product carrying it. The look and feel of the brand carried over to everything from clothing to wallpaper.

BIBA's star crashed back to earth almost as quickly as it rose. Soon after opening the mega department store, Big BIBA in central London in 1974, the fiscal and organizational challenges proved too much for the young entrepreneurs to bear. Investors came in to buy 75% of the company, which led to loss of creative control by Hulanicki. The brand she and Fitz-Simon created fell under aesthetic tackiness as money took precedence over art. She left the company in 1975 and the store was almost immediately closed by the British Land Company.

The magic of BIBA carries on, as nostalgia to the 1960's generation and as inspiration for today's fashionistas.

And for faithful reader, B: