Biba

Biba is one of the most evocative and fondly remembered names in British design history. Founded as a mail-order business by Barbara Hulanicki in 1964, and soon expanding into its own retail premises, it pioneered a new style, mixing the contemporary with Art Nouveau and Art Deco and reflecting the golden age of Hollywood, dressing itself in the richly luxuriant colours of a bygone time. In the years up to its spectacular crash in 1975, it played a key part in making London the most fashionable city in the world. And in its final glorious incarnation in Kensington High Street, as the first new department store to open in the capital since the 1930s, it created a potent myth that lives on even amongst many who never experienced it first hand. The Biba Experience relates and fully illustrates the complete story of Barbara Hulanicki's extraordinary achievement, based on the author's exhaustive researches among designers, business leaders, past customers and Biba's many devoted staff, who, almost without exception, recall their employment there with both excitement and fondness.