I remember the first time I walked into the Big Biba shop in Kensington, I didn’t know where to look. Actually, that’s not strictly true, as I wanted to look everywhere, but was so self-conscious (I was barely 14), I couldn’t look more than a few feet in front of me.
At that time, it was the most extraordinary place I’d ever seen. It wasn’t just huge, it was cool (or, as I would have said at the time, trendy; no one said cool). Like a Roxy Music album cover, in fact. And at that age, all I really wanted was to live inside a Roxy Music album cover. We all did, us 14-year-olds.
Also, there was nothing they didn’t appear to sell, from cosmetics and food to books and lots of things I didn’t know the names of. I had stupidly thought it was just a clothes shop, whereas what they were was a lifestyle squeezed into a building.
I think I left that day with a deodorant. Not only was it one of the few things I could afford, it was also one of the few things I understood. There were other shops in Kensington High Street at the time — Kensington Market, for instance, and dozens of places selling cowboy boots, leather wristbands and cheesecloth shirts — but nowhere that looked like the cover of For Your Pleasure.
The Biba Story is full of everything from dresses, shoes and hats to soup cans: tins of shark’s fin, bird’s nest, turtle, lobster
Biba soon faded from my life, as it did everyone’s, and we all moved on. Fifteen years later, on holiday in Miami, I ended up one night having dinner with Barbara Hulanicki and her hilarious husband Fitz, the two mavericks who had invented Biba back in the Sixties. We didn’t talk much about the old days, as by then Barbara (who was still beautiful) was designing and decorating art deco hotels on South Beach (we were eating that night in The Marlin, one of the places she had recently renovated), but it felt special to be spending time with two people who had been so important to London.
And now Biba is back again, in case you hadn’t noticed, ensconced for the next six months in the brilliant Fashion and Textile Museum down in Bermondsey. The Biba Story, 1964-1975, is pretty damn special, and is full of everything from dresses, shoes and hats to the important stuff like posters, make-up and — obviously — soup cans: there are some rather marvellous black and gold tins of consommé, shark’s fin soup, bird’s nest soup, real turtle soup, lobster soup, vichyssoise and baked beans. I knew the exhibition was going to be good as I went to the shop first (I always do this), and half the merch had already sold out. Shame. If I had been curating this, I would have over-indexed on the merch, and would have commissioned plenty of lights, mirrors and replica soup cans, but then that’s probably why I’m not allowed to curate exhibitions.
Where fashion is concerned, I often think the Fashion and Textile Museum has the best ideas, but that the V&A obviously has the money. So, if this show had been at the V&A, no doubt it would have been bigger, and more comprehensive. But then they didn’t have the idea in the first place, now did they?
I’ve been going to the Fashion and Textile Museum for ages now (they had an exhibition on the Sixties about 10 years ago that was one of the best I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen them all) and would encourage any of you who have never been there to make an effort and go. In 10 years, the area has changed almost completely (these days you can’t move for barristers and baristas), and there were moments when I swear I could have been walking through Belgravia. Which made me think how much London has changed since Biba last closed its doors in the Seventies.
The greatest thing about the Biba show is how understated it is. Yes, we did this, seems to be the subtext, but then as London is the most regenerative place in the world, should anyone be surprised?
Well, yes I think we should. And amazed. So miss this show at your peril.
